


Monsters, Me, and the Moon (all things that orbit you)

by ShaShirRa, SheDrabbles_butitsalie_ (ShaShirRa)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger, But not the duchey kind, F/M, Hari's previous years referenced only, He’s not good but he’s not evil, Hufflepuff & Slytherin Inter-House Friendships, Hufflepuff Neville Longbottom, Hufflepuff/Slytherin Inter-House Relationships, Indian Harry Potter, It’s a grey area, Luna Lovegood is a Good Friend, Near Obscurial? Can you be almost an Obscurial?, Obscurial Tom Riddle, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Ravenclaw Harry Potter, Ravenclaw Hermione Granger, Sane Tom Riddle, Seer Luna Lovegood, Sirius Black Free from Azkaban, Sirius Black is Lord Black, Tom Riddle has issues, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, Tom Riddle-centric, Tom needs good friends, ish, or rather
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/ShaShirRa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaShirRa/pseuds/SheDrabbles_butitsalie_
Summary: Time is a fickle thing - not liner or ever-set, but branching and ever-changing. Tom Riddle thought he had more of it, until what should have been an every-day occurrence took a turn for the worst. In a blink, Tom Riddle stops existing in one reality . . . And reappears in another.(Because much like Time, Magic is non-liner, and she does as she pleases.)The next thing Tom Riddle knows, it’s the summer of 1994, and there is a house shaped like a Rook, a man that see’s things he can’t, and a girl that dances around his questions, gives no straight answers, and doesn’t seem to mind the Darkness of his shadow versus hers.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood & Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood/Tom Riddle, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Neville Longbottom & Harry Potter
Comments: 23
Kudos: 57





	1. To live was to die (a sear of light behind my eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely consumed Into Your Gravity by sockyferret (incomplete on here, but complete with a sequel on FF.Net, check it out!) can you tell? Regardless, I went a little different in my interpretation of these characters, since there’s no real character information on them to begin with. (I’m sorry, but only introducing Luna Lovegood as a character in the latter half of the series was an utter travesty, and lack of any real info for Tom Riddle’s early life is irritating.)  
> I should be focusing on my main fic, but then this happened. So yeah.

There were fires overtaking the northern entrance to the Shelter. Tom could feel his heart pounding an irregular beat inside his chest, the thrum of drill sirens and screams in the air. People were pushing and pulling, ebbing and flowing around him, scrambling for safety they wouldn't-couldn't reach.

(His mind knew, already, what he was trying not to think about, facts and figures and distance-plus-rate-of-bodies-cannot-equal-safety.)

“Mrs. Cole!” One of the younger children cried.

Tom did not bother to turn and see them all huddled behind her, clinging to each other against the force of so many people running. He did not bother to take his eyes away from roaring flames and the pile of loosely stored goods, some of which were medical, some of which were mechanical-electrical- _explosive_. The other orphans cried and screamed, but Tom watched the fires reach greedy red fingers toward the cache of very explosive supplies and knew.

(As he had always known things, in abstract ways. Known that there was more to apples falling from trees before he ever picked up a scientific text, knew that water reflected the light and coloration of anything over a big enough body of it, knew that he was special.)

Tom watched the explosion happen, and felt his fingers fumble in his jacket pocket, reaching for the one thing he’d never parted with since he was eleven. He’d only just curled his trembling hand around the wood of his wand when he felt the sear of heat against his face. He had a terrible, resounding realization - a realization he was finally acknowledging, now that the proof of it was brushing up against him - that this was it. He was going to die.

(The dark creature that lived inside him screamed in rage and tried to push to the forefront, but that would only get him killed quicker.)

There would be no second chances here. No way out. This was all his life would amount to in the end. A long series of rage and confusion and loneliness. He could admit to the loneliness, now that he was dying. Hecate, but he wished that just once, his life had been touched by something other than ill-informed hatred and reactionary violence.

His eyes snapped closed against his wishes, because the truth of the matter was that Tom Riddle was a coward, terrified of death and anything that came after.

(He was not a good Catholic boy. There was no heaven waiting for him. But there might be a hell.)

He could feel the searing warmth but no pain, yet there was a force pulling-pulling-pulling on him, wrenching him back.

(He'd amounted to nothing. He was nothing. He was dying and he'd managed nothing in life.)

Tom Riddle knew darkness, then blinked out of one existence.

And straight into another.

* * *

Luna Lovegood paused in carefully picking apart the petals of a vibrantly yellow sunflower, her attention caught by a low, piercing sound. It started as a thrum in the back of her mind, and then turned into a siren song at the forefront of it. Luna dropped what she was doing in the potions study and followed where the call lead, drifting over the cool floors of her family home like she might drift on air.

(That is to say, like she might drift on air with a broom in hand. Of course, Luna wasn’t the best at flying. Her magic would much rather be doing other things.)

“Moon Drop?” Daddy called curiously, as she wandered through the family room and towards the front door.

Luna couldn’t answer. Something far more important was happening. She could feel it, could see it, entire portions of the possible future, of the possible time-line, being re-written. Something in their version of reality was about to change drastically.Luna’s toes sunk slightly into the Earth with her first step into the vast moors of their property. She didn’t pause, merely drifted on, pulled on a string she’d never realized was tethered to her. Daddy followed, quiet and curious, and they both came to a stop before one of the Fairy-Rings.

Luna peered curiously at the faint unweaving of time, the shimmer of new possibilities, and Daddy stared into the ring like it might produce a full Fairy court at any moment.

(Which was not, she saw, and impossibility, but not likely to happen at that particular moment. Fairies were tricky like that.)

The weight of crashing waves, the violence of the sea, was suddenly such a predominant thing in her mind. Luna folded easily onto her knees and focused on breathing through the harsh onslaught of power that was not hers and was not Daddy’s. Olde Magic filled the air, crushing in the space of the Fairy-Ring.The sound of distant, screeching lightening, and the tart, tangy taste of something inhuman on her tongue. Citrus and sour candy, sparks along her senses. Luna sank into the feeling and let herself simply be, eyes wandering over the swirl of magic and the crash of fate.

There was a loud pop, like the uncorking of a particularly large bottle of butter-beer, and then there was simply a boy sprawled out in their Fairy Ring. Luna blinked down at him and watched as his present and possibilities all shimmered, watched them form and re-form in the most unsettled manner she’d ever seen.

“Moon Drop,” Daddy said slowly, crouching down next to her, “There’s a strange boy in our Fairy Ring.”

Poor Daddy sounded so confused, and Luna couldn’t blame him. She knew - had known-felt-seen? She wasn’t sure she’d expected exactly this, really - he’d been coming, but didn’t, for the life of her, know why he was important. She only really understood one thing.

“Hecate is asking us to watch over him.” She sighed, eyes drifting up a thin, too-thin wrist to settle on the boy’s closed eyes.

(He was far too skinny, in her opinion. That couldn’t be healthy.)

Daddy shifted next to her, and then pulled out his wand airily.

“We best get him somewhere warm then.”

Luna nodded, as that did sound like a fine plan. She was suddenly very grateful that she’d started more food for diner that afternoon than they really needed.

* * *

There was the faint smell of lavender and citrus, the cloying taste of too many herbs and spices in the air. Below that, the smell of a classic English roast, and the screech of a teapot, the drifting scent of Earl Grey. A small silence interrupted only sparsely by distant, soft voices and the clink of something he couldn’t place.When Tom struggled his eyes open, he was nothing but confused. The last thing he remembered was searing heat and the hazy-afraid-dark feeling of impending death. His heart started beating too-hard in his chest, his breathing stuttering out.

(In the depths of his mind and magic, his darkness was wrapped tightly-protectively around him, fangs bared and body bristled with confused-rage.)

He flailed in the confining, stupid blanket he’d been wrapped up in, and struggled to sit up. His vision felt blurry, his head fogged still with the instinct to freeze-fight-run. He managed to get himself upright, at least partially, but his arms were trembling too much to hold him up for long.

Probably the most surprising thing was the pair of warm-cool-soft hands that gripped one shoulder tentatively and helped him sit up. The vibrant, crisp taste of magic fluttered over him, not probing or pushing or taking, but giving. Tom disliked the idea that he was being weak in front of someone, initially, but then something stronger than his desire to appear strong reared to life.

(Lonely. So very lonely, this feeling was. Tom had no idea ~~which was a lie~~ where it came from. He’d told himself he didn’t need people when he was six-turning-seven, when the Darkness underneath his skin first made a brutal appearance, and that had been true ever since. . . It had, hadn’t it?)

One of the hands on his shoulder shifted and was suddenly on his forehead, carefully brushing through his hair.

“Oh, you’re quite warm.” A voice said.

(The hand left his head. He tried to pretend he hadn’t been leaning into the cool press of skin on skin.)

That voice was clear and airy, dreamy and distant, all while being firmly present. It was also the softest, kindest tone anyone had ever taken while speaking to him, without appearing like some adult that thought they knew better. Something icy and glass-like was pressed to his lips, and he almost jerked back.

“Shh now, it’s alright,” the voice declared, and that hand was back in his hair again after a small hesitation, “you’re suffering from Temporal Magiks. This potion will help clear your head a bit so you can get up to eat. I’m sure you’re quite hungry.”

Tom tried to focus on the words ‘Temporal Magiks,’ but couldn’t because the glass vial was being pressed questioningly to his lips again. He would have thought, being a Slytherin, it would have taken more effort on this stranger's part to have his lips parting and his body tensing for the surely disgusting taste of some potion.

(If Lestrange could see him now, he’d be crowing with laughter.)

The potion tasted like rotten apples and lemonade - so not really the most terrible he’d ever had - and it took — well, he’s not sure how long it took to work because counting was hard with his brain all fogged and his everything still shaking slightly.

What he is sure of is that those hands didn’t leave him through the process. One was a steadying tether on his shoulder, the other was attempting to keep his hair out of his face. Tom leaned into the touch despite his internal promise to not be weak.

(He knew why he kept breaking his own rules. He was in shock, and this stranger was showing him care he rarely received. For a touch-starved Orphan, that would be hard to resist. It did not mean that he would continue being weak once he felt better. Maybe if he repeated this enough, it would become a truth.)

“Try opening your eyes?” The voice very much asked, and Tom realized he had no idea when he’d first closed his eyes after forcing them open.

He turned all his determination and fuzzy focus into making his eyelids lift.

(It was harder to do than he wanted it to be.)

He was sitting on a bed, and from his vantage hunched over the side of it, feet awkwardly placed on the floor, arms weakly braced on his knees, he could see a pair of smaller, bare feet in front of him. Her toe-nails were pale blue, and her largest toes had colorful flowers charmed to bloom and wilt on them. Definitely a witch then.

(Maybe he’d apparated in a last-ditch attempt to save himself?)

Her ankles looked especially pointy, but there was the beginning of a pair of sheer, tight leggings stretching up. They were pale yellow. The skirt - far too short to be decent, wasn’t it? - he could only just make out from his vantage looked to be a deep, sparkling blue.

Her knees suddenly bent, and the hand on his head slipped down. Tom stared at the girl that was facing him - but not looking at him, rather at the area around his head - and contemplated that she was exactly like her voice had led him to believe, and nothing like it all at once.

Her hair was long pale blonde and slightly golden, eyes wide and silvery - there was a ring of deep grey around her pupils, drawing attention in. She wore a mint-green blouse, the cut just slightly too big for her, but that hardly made it look ill-fitted. The faint, soft curve of her brows gave her a surprised look, and the almost absent way she was observing the area over his head should have been disconcerting. Instead, he felt calmed by the fact that she wasn’t looking at him.

(He could be weak in this moment, without her really looking at him.)

Her lips, a soft pink, parted - as if in additional surprise - and her words came out sounding just as pleasantly soft and airy as the rest of her looked.

“You’ve quite a few Wakspurts in your hair. I’ve chased most of them away now, but you should be careful. A big enough swarm eats memories.”

Tom blinked slowly at her, the fogs still drifting through his mind making her words even more nonsensical.

“Whut?” He asked, and the word came out in the roughened drawl of a child that had been reared in the darkness of Eastern London’s backstreets. It wasn’t the cultured, learned accent he’d adopted after Hogwarts, wasn’t the voice he used to sway and manipulate and control.

“It’s alright,” she cooed, her small, soft hand reaching up and briefly running through his hair again, “you have time to let yourself adjust.”

Then she was standing and tugging him up, so easily keeping him steady when he swayed. He didn’t have a chance to question her, because the next thing he knew, they were stumbling down a spiral staircase, and he was being seated at a dining table. A man was already seated across from him, papers with colorful, scribbled notes strewn in front of him. His hair was much paler than he girls, much more curly and much less wavy, and when he looked up, his eyes were a deeper, grayer blue. Still, there was no mistaking the faint resemblance between them. The girl skipped past them both and started checking pots and pans on the stove, then she came wandering back.

“Supper’s done, Daddy,” her eyes flickered in his direction, and her eyes widened impossibly, “I’m sorry, we haven’t introduced ourselves! I’m Lovegood, Luna Lovegood, and this is my Daddy.”

The man looked up, his eyes focusing on Tom for a bare minute, his smile just as soft and absent as his daughters.

“Lovegood, Xenophilous Lovegood. It’s quite good to see you up. You are?”

Tom fought through the haziness in his mind, trying to pull up the boy who could so easily use his words to get his way. That boy was lost in the fog, leaving behind the Orphan from London.

“Riddle, Tom Riddle.” The words were hoarse and honey-thick, a sure sign that he was the furthest thing from pureblooded, if his name hadn’t already done that.

Xenophilous’s eyes lit in an odd way and he smiled, a sunny, purely happy thing.

“That’s a good name! A walking riddle - a boy who is contradictions and turns of phrase, yes?” Tom had been willing to argue that his name was not good, but was stopped short by such a simple way of looking at the connotations of it.

It was . . . Confusing, to be sure, the way this man was looking at him, being a very-clearly pureblooded wizard who . . . Was nothing like Malfoy or Nott’s parents. Luna suddenly sat down between them, placing a large, round platter of rolls down, and a series of dishes and pots started levitating themselves to the table. The next hour was a whirlwind of — of something. The Lovegood’s were calm and collected - and possibly extremely dotty, if the way they simply accepted that he’d apparently just _appeared_ in their back yard was anything to go by. Xenophilous cut the roast for them, and Luna very insistently kept pushing roast potatoes and carrots his way.

Tom merely drifted in the middle of it, eating because he was hungry and his head was foggy, listening to them speak because there was little else to do with his own mind turned against him. Were he in his right mind, he knows he would have already pried as many details about their location as he could from the two. Though he distantly doubts he’d have to try very hard. They are such honest, open books, he’s extremely disconcerted by it.

(Sitting with them was like living in the dark and being shown the sunshine. It hurt, knowing that he, who lived on lies and manipulations and double-standards was being so easily welcomed by them now. They would turn away from him the instant they knew. Everyone always did. It was much harder to shove the hurt down when he felt so disconnected from everything.)

By the time he got around to asking what had happened, his mind was feeling more centered, even if the fog hadn’t completely left, his hands still trembling every few minutes.

Luna looked up from where she’d been absently pushing her potatoes around, her attention drifting away from eating more often than it drifted to it. He and her father had already moved onto after-dinner tea, but Xenophilous hardly seemed concerned with the girls' slow eating habits. Luna smiled in his direction, almost dazedly, before she responded.

“Lady Hecate asked us to watch over you. You’ve been Temporally Displaced, taken out of your own time, and placed in another.”

After dropping that particular bomb, so simply that she might have been talking about the weather, Luna returned her attention . . . Not to her potatoes, but to the salt-shaker by her elbow. Tom waited for her to elaborate, but it didn’t look like an explanation would be forthcoming.

Thankfully, Xenophilous either saw Tom’s confusion, or was taking pity on him.

“From time to time, if a young wizard or witch in the Time Tree is in a desperate situation, they get displaced from their own time - from the time in which they died too young or too early,” Xenophilous started slowly, looking more and more excited with every confusing word, “our time isn’t connected to your time, except that at one point, somewhere in our past — or even future — a decision was made that created a separate branch. In your timeline, you’re dead, but in ours, you live, maybe even have lived, or still live.”

Tom stared. He stared so long that he could almost feel the fog threatening to come back and consume.

“Whut?” He drawled again.

Luna glanced his way and smiled dreamily.

“You're a time-traveler now, Tom.”

Tom stared some more, and then decided he was done.

“I reckon I'd like to pull a Bo Peep.”

Which wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but Luna nodded seriously to her potatoes.

“Daddy? Tom would like to go back to his room now? I think he’s quite tired.” She sighed, eyes drifting over his head before they settled back on the salt shaker.

Xeno nodded in a similarly absent way, and then stood.

“I’ll show you to your room!”

Blessedly, no more confusing conversation took place, and he was shortly laying down again, drifting to sleep even with his mind looping back over the damning words he’d just been given.

_You’re a time-traveler now, Tom._

They’d said like it was no big deal.

_In your timeline, you’re dead—_

They’d said, like it wasn’t Tom’s biggest nightmare, dying. And yet, he drifted to a fit-less, dreamless sleep. Worrying was for another Tom. This Tom was very tired from almost dying and apparently time-traveling on sort-of-accident.

* * *

When Luna woke the morning after Tom Marvolo Riddle landed in their Fairy Ring, it was to the smell of bacon and eggs. This was enough of a worry that she didn’t drift in the hazy, no-where space between visions like she usually did after waking. Daddy was far too absent-minded to be cooking anything on his own - he’d nearly burnt the house down last time he tried making breakfast.

She hurriedly put on a bathrobe - the pretty, shimmering purple one Daddy had sent her last Yule, while she’d been in Hogwarts and he was overseas. A particularly strong Possibility tried to catch her attention as she was making her way downstairs, but she shoved it aside for later.

“Daddy? You’re not cooking again, are you?” She called, hurrying into the kitchen — only to stop in surprise. Tom was sitting very properly at their dining table, the daily prophet open in front of him.

(He looked angry and bothered by something within it, but when his eyes flashed up to hers, the emotion was wiped away, like it had never been. His Possibilities were rewriting themselves again — and that was almost distracting enough to leave her befuddled.)

“Your Father ran out very early this morning, after I managed to get more of an explanation for my . . . Situation, from him.” He said slowly, his voice lacking the thickened, heavy drawl of East London.

Luna tilted her head towards the sound in interest, eyes drifting to the shimmering peeks into his person that hung around him. Normally she tried not to look at such things, but Tom was a special case.

(Would-be-has-been-must-be? It was hard to tell. She knew who he might have become, had he stayed in his own time. She knew who he had become, in hers. The question was — what would he be now?)

“Daddy does that sometimes. It’s why he’s not allowed to cook.” She responded belatedly, blinking away from him and towards the stove.

“I’ll go get dressed.” She sighed, absently brushing away the Knowings that tried to filter in front of her.

Tom said nothing to her while she retreated, and that was fine. He was still quite confused, even having got answers. She’d have to clean the Wakspruts off him again before they went to the Bank. She moved through her morning routine slightly quicker than normal,not wanting to leave Tom alone for long.

(He was thinking about leaving, and she couldn’t allow that. It was only a thought in the back of his head, so there was no real vision to it, but that way lay darkness.)

As a result, her hair ended up a damp mess over her shoulders, which she shoved a handful of butterfly pins into, simply to keep it out of her face. When she made it back down into the kitchen, Tom was leaning against their sink, looking out into the yard beyond. He looked pensive, almost too thoughtful, and Luna hurried to speak.

(Dark, dark, dark. Whatever he was thinking was a bad idea.)

“Daddy should be back inside soon. Hobble-runts don’t like extreme daylight. They’re only active between three and seven in the morning.” Luna explained, claiming the seat across from him and shuffling Xeno’s papers into organized piles without really looking at the content.

Tom turned towards her, and something that passed as a smile drifted onto his face. She observed he was very good at mimicry, but that he also needed to learn how to smile for real. Truly being happy was a power in itself, as there were some creatures you simply couldn’t drive away without some happiness — like Wakspruts.

“Does your father often run around chasing . . .” She could tell he wanted to say ‘imaginary creatures,’ because most people did, “Hobble-runts, in the early morning?”

Luna nodded, and then got up to help in dishing out breakfast before the timer on the oven had finished going off. Tom was struggling with what he wanted to say, she could tell, so she remained silent, out of respect for all his unsettled thoughts. Unsettled thoughts were quite destructive when not given the proper space to sort themselves out.

(They tended to eat the settled thoughts and then everything turned into a big mess, and the next thing you knew? Wakspurt infestation.)

“Your father said that as the family that Lady Hecate placed me with, you’re honor-bound to assist me for the next two years at the minimum?” Tom said slowly, and she could tell he was still extremely unsure about staying with them.

“Oh yes. It’s not a very well-known fact, for obvious reasons, but Temporal Travelers happen quite a bit. Every country has a different way of dealing with them, of course, but in Britain, the family that finds them — or is blessed with them — is responsible for making sure they catch their own footing. It’s often been found that Temporal Travelers will stay with the families that find them even after the two-year period, but it’s not a requirement.” Luna explained, carefully spreading the mixed-berry jelly over every conceivable inch of her toast.

Tom was staring at his own plate of food with a deeply contemplative look.

“I wouldn’t want to be a burden—” he started to say.

(Dark-dark-dark—)

“Never mind about that. It’s just Daddy and I here, and most days, it’s just me, because sometimes Daddy travels for work. It can get quite lonely when I’m on my own. That doesn’t mean we have to be friends, if you’d rather not, but just having someone else around would be nice.” Luna explained.

(Be honest, her magic was whispering, over and over again. Honesty is key. Luna could see where it was coming from. For a boy used to living with lies — ‘You’re a freak-monster-menace-’ — honesty would be a draw, even if he didn’t want it to be.)

Tom was staring at her again, but she was too busy piling her bacon together, building a wall between her toast and her eggs. She disliked it when the yoke touched her toast.

“You don’t pity me.” Tom stated slowly, and Luna blinked down at her wall of bacon in some confusion.

“No, of course not. What’s to pity?” She asked, eyes drifting up to settle on his forehead. To her horror, there was a handful of Wakspurts starting to gather over his head.

(She couldn’t really see them clearly, but the faintest shimmer in the air always denoted their presence.)

“Oh dear, they are quite attracted to you, aren’t they?” She muttered, shifting to her feet and slowly reaching out, waving her hand over his hair carefully.

Tom stared at her in confusion - she could tell because when her eyes dropped back to his forehead, his eyebrows were furrowed - before he abruptly stood and placed his plate in the sink, then leaned against the counter. Putting more distance between them. She’d possibly have to start asking if she could remove the Wakspurts, because he seemed bothered by her simply doing so.

“I don’t think I understand anything that’s happening.” Tom declared, and he sounded very bothered by it.

Luna smiled faintly in his direction, eyeing the slowly-settling hints of his future. There were a couple blurry spots still, but whatever he was thinking, he was no longer considering wandering off on his own.

“Daddy says that life is often confusing, but never boring for it. I tend to agree.” She sighed, then tried to devote herself to finishing a meal.

They said very little in the following stretch of waiting, but very little needed to be said. It was the most comfortable stretch of waiting that Luna had ever sat through with another person close to her age.

(He was fourteen - she didn’t think he’d told her that yet, but at some point he must, because she Knew. Fourteen and born as the year died. There was something poetic to that.)

“Can I ask why you don’t ever look at me?” The sudden question scrambled Luna’s thoughts, and she blinked at him in startlement.

She shifted the slightest bit, her heart clenching in the cage of her chest.

“It’s impolite to read someone’s face without knowing them first.” She said carefully.

(Faces were very tricky. She tried to avoid them, because they threw her for a loop - sometimes seeing a certain face had her spiraling into a world of could-be’s and might-have-beens. Sometimes she looked at a face and learned uncomfortable things - like the exact time they would die, no matter their decisions in life. Sometimes she looked and was drown by the veritable oceans of alternate faces that person could have had.)

“What do you mean?” He asked slowly.

Luna contemplated how best to answer, then set her fork down carefully, since she was having trouble eating anyway.

“Faces tell you a lot about a person. They’re almost like . . . Like book covers, but for people. I find I know more about a person from their face than I do from talking to them. I think it’s a little rude, to pick up so much without ever saying anything, you see?” She said, just as slowly as he’d asked the question.

Tom went quiet, but it was a thinking sort of quiet, rather the kind of quiet that usually followed in Luna’s wake. The kinds where her year-mates were coming to their own, wrong conclusions about her, and deciding she was silly and strange. Tom’s quiet was thinking in a way that meant he was puzzling over her words, and knowing that in and of itself - that he was taking what she said into serious consideration - made her feel . . .

Fluttery. Soft. Like there was warm, melting butter in her heart and stomach. It was nice, having her words treated so seriously, rather than flippantly ignored. Daddy burst into the room then, and Luna turned her head in his direction.

“Moon Drop! You’re awake! This is wonderful — we can take Tom to Gringotts and get the process started!” Daddy chortled, in an unusually good mood for not catching a Hobble-runt.

Luna smiled at her father’s eager energy, and stood, glancing at Tom, still leaning against their counter.

“What, exactly, is this process?” He asked.

“Oh, no one knows. Those that go through it are put into a very serious vow of silence over the whole thing, because even if Temporal Travel isn’t as unusual as everyone makes it out to be, it’s rather serious.” Xenophilous declared airily, popping open a robe cupboard and digging through it for a moment before he tossed a soft, butter yellow one over his shoulders, and then glanced at Luna.

Considering she hadn’t been paying much attention when she picked out her clothing, Luna glanced down at herself as well, and was pleased to find that she matched this time. A deep purple blouse with rabbits embroidered along the hem, enchanted to hop every few minutes, and a mustard yellow skirt with a carrot patch on the right-hand side. There were sparkles in her deep blue leggings, and for a moment, she enjoyed wiggling her toes just to see the faint glimmer.

Her father stepped up to her, and he was placing a soft blue summer robe over her shoulders. Smiling up him, Luna shifted to slip her arms through the sleeves, and Daddy started speaking again.

“Please, help yourself, Tom!” He announced, motioning to the robe closet.

Tom hesitated only a moment before he shifted forward and flicked through their selection, but finally pulled out a deep green one and - with only a small amount of awkwardness - put it over his shoulders. Luna admired the way the green looked against his pale skin in an absent manner, following after Daddy as he lead them all to the Floo.

“I only assume you’ve used a Floo before?” Daddy asked, and Tom replied, though Luna didn’t catch the words he used.

(Her mind was a swirl of deep green and black, the colors seeming very important for reasons she couldn’t say.)

“Alright, to the Leaky Cauldron then, Moon Drop!” Daddy called, and Luna obligingly reached for the Floo powder.

Despite her new distraction, there was a part of her that was all too eager for what followed. Goblins, after all, were the most interesting, funny sort of creatures that never failed to make things _more_ interesting.

(Even as the Floo sprung to vibrant life, the back of her mind was a swirl of deep green and consuming black, and she could not, for everything in her that was-knew-had-been-would-be, say why.)

* * *

Tom stepped out of the Floo as easily as he did most things, and was very satisfied to note that he had hardly stumbled. His first time using a Floo, he’d done so, but it appeared that every time after got easier. This was a good thing, as he would have hated to stumble in front of Luna or her Father. The Lovegoods might have been odd, but they were also the only people he’d ever met that seemed to revel in his attitude, rather than being put off by it. He’d only noted halfway through breakfast that he’d hardly had to put on a mask at all. It was . . .

(Warmth and cold i n equal measures, the Darkness inside him curled tightly and waiting. Waiting because even the most accepting rarely wanted to see all of him. Tom shoved those feelings aside harshly.)

“We’ll do some shopping after the bank, if that’s alright with you Tom. You’ll need your own clothing.” Xeno muttered as they ambled towards the bank. Tom nodded as he observed father and child closely, puzzling over them.

It was bizarre, to realize he’d been more honest with perfect strangers than anyone else to date, and they hadn’t yet looked at him with revulsion or awe. In Luna’s case, he wasn’t sure she’d really looked at him at all. Her gaze always shifted over him, as if his face and figure were unimportant, her eyes always settling on some nowhere point above his head or shoulders.

He understood, to some degree, what she’d said about faces, but there was something about how she’d worded it that made him believe that, for the first time, she hadn’t been completely honest.

(But it also hadn't been a lie, or at least, not a lie meant to keep him in the dark.)

Xenophilous lead them into the bank, and several of the Goblins nearest to them paused in work and looked up, directly at Tom. He didn’t like that. The Goblins were highly attuned to magic, and at present, they were all looking at him with some degree of fascinated interest.

“Xenophilous Lovegood, here to see the Goblin manager in charge of handling Code Seventy-six cases.” Luna’s father declared airily to the goblin teller he’d lead them too.

What was really surprising was how swiftly they were lead back to an office, when Goblins were known for rather spitefully making people wait.

(Though Tom had never had that experience - being polite and cordial had usually gotten him seen as swiftly as they were able.)

“How do you know so much about this if everything is supposed to be kept quiet?” Tom asked as they were walking back, voice very politely low.

Xeno blinked at him over a slim shoulder and frowned in confusion.

“Haven’t I mentioned great-aunt Terra yet? How silly of me.” He replied, then turned around again, almost absently following the Goblin.

Luna shifted a little closer to him and responded for her father, her eyes drifting over the floor in front of her as they walked.

“Great-aunt Terra married a man who’d been Temporally Displaced quite far into the future. He was from the Hogwarts Founders time, and was simply stunned at all the changes the world had made. She found him being drug off by Fairies, and saved him. Of course, she isn’t the only Lovegood in our family tree to run into a Temporal Traveler. You could say we’re drawn to them. Or maybe they’re drawn to us?”

Tom wasn’t sure to say to that any more than he was sure how to respond to half the things she’d told him so far. It also hadn’t really answered his question. In the office, Xeno and Tom were ushered into a seat directly behind a desk where one Goblin was scribbling furiously on some parchment. Luna drifted towards an armchair that had been set against the far wall.

“Right then. To business.” The Goblin declared, and Tom took a quick look at his name plaque.

Gapingmaw the Ripper. Tom truly enjoyed Goblin naming.

“Greetings - may your enemies continue to tremble beneath you,” Xenophilis started, wide eyes on the Goblin across from him and practically bleeding excitement, “Yesterday afternoon, Tom Riddle appeared in the back of our property, unconscious and simply _bleeding_ with Temporal Magiks.”

The Goblin stared at Xeno for a heart-beat of time, then sighed, muttering something in Gobbledegook under his breath that Tom couldn’t catch, before said Goblin produced a sharp golden dagger and a familiar piece of parchment.

“Three drops of blood, if you would.”

Tom obliged, watching as the parchment started to fill itself out. There was no new information on it for him, so he handed it back over. The Goblin stared at it quietly - blankly - for a stretched minute before he started muttering under his breath again and started scribbling more furious notes. Those same notes vanished when he tossed them into a box at his elbow, and Gapingmaw steepled his fingers and sighed.

“You enjoy causing a fuss every time you come here, don’t you Lord Lovegood?” The Goblin asked, scowling at Xenophilous.

Tom could honestly say he was surprised that the man held a title.

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fussing.” Xenophilous returned easily, smiling eccentrically at the Goblin.

The door opened behind them, and two other Goblins walked in. They all argued quietly over the parchment, then one of them - quiet begrudgingly - handed over a leather folio and marched away again. Finally, Gapingmaw turned to them and smiled a toothy, Goblin smile.

“Right then. I’ll start setting up the mandatory paperwork, and inform the Ministry that we need a Temporal Services Agent. After we have all of that paperwork done with, we’ll move on to vaults and vault access, shall we?”

Unfortunately, this did not serve to answer any questions Tom had about what was presently happening. Neither did the following two hours, where a harried, eager looking man in Ministry robes bustled into the room and cooed excitedly over Tom. He wanted to rip the man’s briefcase out of his hands and hit him with it within the first few minutes.

He was asked a series of questions that made sense —

“What were you doing before you woke up here in our time?”

“On a scale of one to ten, with one being none and ten being deadly, how dangerous was that situation?”

“Where, geographically, did this happen? I have a map for reference here.”

“What year were you born, and what year was it before you woke up in this one?”

And then there were the questions that made no sense at all.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Do you celebrate the Muggle holidays, or practice Wixen tradition?”

“What was the last thing you ate — before you traveled?”

“Any strange cravings since you first woke up here?”

He hadn’t thought the Ministry could get more ridiculous, but finally, the man smiled wide and bright, double-checked he had everyone’s signature, and then laughingly declared them done.

“I’ll get working on having the Headmaster of Hogwarts sworn to silence, and get him to fast-track your papers - at least, as much as one can with Hogwarts. You,” he said this while looking at Gapingmaw, an eager light in his eyes, “will immediately send me all relevant information, including his new name and date of birth?”

Gapingmaw looked frankly offended to have the man asking, and growled him out of his office before he turned back to Tom.

“Now, we cannot allow you to continue using the name Tom Riddle, as our records show that this time-lines version of you still lives, somewhere. You’ll need to pick a different inheritable name. I have compiled a list of options, based on what we know of your alternate self and what you qualify for at present.”

Tom blinked, a little stunned, but nodded and glanced over the provided list. Finally, with a sigh, he circled Thomas Cadmus Slytherin, deeply disturbed that this time-lines Tom Riddle hadn’t yet claimed the Slytherin title. There were fifty years between him and this version of him, weren't there? What had he been _doing?_

(Tom had quietly claimed it at thirteen, but had been unable to act on his titles until he was fifteen without negative repercussions. If this version of him was too stupid to claim what he had, Tom was not going to be kind and just leave the titles sitting there.)

“Excellent. And your date of birth?”

Tom blinked at the Goblin and then frowned.

“I’m fourteen. Fifteen in December.” He reminded, probably unnecessarily.

“So you agree to the birthdate December 31st, 1980?” Gapingmaw pressed, and after a very quick mental calculation, Tom nodded.

Gapingmaw sent him a toothy smile in response.

“Wonderful. I’ll be sure to send that information along with everything else, once you and Lord Lovegood sign this Contract of Care.”

Tom accepted their copy and read it carefully, trying to puzzle over all its meanings. He had a lot of questions - questions that the Goblin in front of him answered first with some amusement, then with some impatience. Finally, he signed, a little hesitant with his name at first.

(The contract itself boiled down to this — the Lovegoods were responsible for helping him navigate the world for the next two years, emotionally, physically, and financially, as the family that found him and claimed guardianship over him. There were, as far as he could tell, no negatives.)

“Excellent. I’m going to pop over and get Tom set up with a trust fund under the Lovegoods.” Xenophilous finally declared, after he’d affirmed he didn’t need to sign anything else.

Tom, apparently, still had some paperwork to fill out.

“Miss Lovegood, would you mind overmuch if I placed a silencing ward up around you?” Gapingmaw called, and Luna blinked down at her book dazedly.

He’s not sure where she produced it from, but she’d had it between one moment and the next, her legs tucked up underneath her in the chair. The girl glanced up and blinked dreamily over at them, then smiled, looking back down just as slowly. Gapingmaw seemed to take that for an answer, because he flicked his fingers and a ripple of magic enveloped Luna.

“Now, Mr. Slytherin, I have some unfortunate news I feel you must learn from a neutral source.” Tom already hated where this was going.

Goblins, the hardiest of any creature he’d encountered, considered very few things unfortunate.

“Alright.” He agreed slowly.

Gapingmaw gave him an odd sort of look and sighed.

What he had to say made Tom’s stomach drop, and the proof he produced made him sick. The books, the articles, the hazy, roughly pieced together information the Goblin had, less because it was widely known fact and more because Goblins made it their business to track their clientele.

“We know not by what means this version of yourself went about creating his power-base, nor do we much care why there was such a clear devolution. What we do care about is that we were promised a stagnant account would be brought back, and then nothing came of it. You will, of course, remedy this.” Gapingmaw finally ended.

After telling him that the slightly silly name Tom had fashioned for himself out of boredom had become a thing feared across Britain. After telling him that a version of himself had turned away from plans for politics and towards indiscriminate killing. After the foundations he’d started building his future dreams on began to crumble.

(What happened to claiming his Lordship? To bringing the Dark Sect back into equal power with the Light, rather than the imbalance it had been? What had happened to keeping magical children in the hands of Muggles safe? _What had happened!_ )

His magic reared away from his careful control, all those damning words ringing in his head. His shock was just enough, his fury was just enough that the inky black tendrils of his magic, normally so tightly wound it hurt, flung off their bindings and whirled from him like vicious honey.Sickly sweet and cloying, that was his magic. It always wanted to be known, to be seen, to be used. Tom tried to draw it back, because the Goblins were not enemies he wanted to make, but his breathing was too harsh and his mind was abuzz with those damning words.

(A trickle of something other along his spine, the weight of a gaze he'd forgotten was even there.)

Tom's head whipped around, and he found that Luna Lovegood was staring at him. Not at the space around his head, or over his shoulders, or some middle point between them. She was looking at _him_ , finally, and she was seeing what he was. Her reaction did not fall under the two he had come to expect, at this point in his life. She did not draw back quickly in horror, like he was a live, wildfire that had tried to consume and burn and destroy. She did not lean forward, entranced and enticed and eager to feel, reaching with her own magic to touch the liquid Darkness of his.

She simply stared at him, as if she was seeing him — meeting him, for the first time. As if he was a puzzle she hadn't realized she'd been tasked with solving. Luna Lovegood looked at him, and his un-tethered magic, and did nothing he expected her to.

(His magic stilled and slowed, the slow-moving whirl of it settling around his shoulders with the same sense of confusion he felt. This day was full of firsts, and Luna was quickly turning his already crumpled world view upside down, because—)

Because good girls like Luna Lovegood did not offer him small, soft smiles from across a room rich with the taste of his raging magic. Girls like Luna, too honest and too soft and too giving, did not smile at monsters that bore all their teeth. Tom's magic retreated from the room as if burned, and Tom took a breath, looking back to Gapingmaw apologetically.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting . . . Any of that." He announced.

The Goblin watched him with blank, beady eyes and nodded solemnly.

"It's not every day one learns a version of themselves turned into a psychotic megalomaniac intent on wiping out a majority of the world populace." The Goblin responded, a little too gleefully, in Tom's opinion.

The damn thing was probably enjoying Tom's distress. Thankfully, Lord Lovegood came back at that point. He paused in the doorway of the room, giving the whole of it an absent, airy sort of glance before he smiled softly at Tom and Luna.

"Are you all ready? It's rather late, and we should be getting our other errands done." He softly declared.

Tom stood and bowed briefly to the Goblin behind the desk.

"May your enemies fall before your blade." He intoned, grateful to be called away before he forgot himself - again - and ripped the Goblin's smug, gleeful smile off its face.

"May your Gold overflow. Gringotts will be contacting you about what you wish to do with your accounts, after all of the paperwork to make you a legal citizen has been finalized." The creature returned, looking at Tom like he knew what he was thinking and found it funny.

Luna stood and skipped towards the door wordlessly, her gaze again absent and unseeing. Tom thought that was maybe for the best.

(His breath was still too harsh, his heart still stuttering in blind fury, but his Darkness, his Monster, stayed firmly withing, wrapped around his Core in shock. No one had ever smiled at them like that. No one. So her not-looking now. . .)

Just encase she decided to be afraid of him after all - like any sensible person - he didn't want to see the fear in her eyes, or deal with tedious blubbering.

(He could not handle that in his present state of mind. It was one thing thinking yourself a monster. Another entirely to be told you actually became one in a version of your life.)

The Lovegood's lead him into Diagon, and he let himself be distracted by their absent-minded advice and poor fashion-sense, just for a little while. There was no harm in ignoring one's problems for little spaces of time.

(Later — Much later, after an afternoon arguing with both Luna and Xenophilous about color choices and styles. After being forced to let Xenophilous pay for his new clothing and several books about recent history - and other things he'd hardly considered, like toiletries - he walked deep into the woods that lay beyond the Lovegood household and released the full, raging force of his magic. He ripped trees to shreds and twisted rocks to dust and let his magic do the panicked, wrathful screaming for him. He very pointedly did not feel bad about it later. There was too much peace inside him after to feel bad, even when Xenophilios spent the next morning excitedly blathering on about what it might be that had ripped up the forest.)


	2. The taste of contentment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled with writing the last half of this so much, I ended up rewriting it like three times before I got it right, but now it's shiny and beautiful.

They fell into a routine, somehow. In the two days since the bank, Luna and her father had integrated him so seamlessly into their lives, he felt like an outsider and an insider all in one. It was unsettling, how well they fit him into their world. As if he’d always been there.

He hated the juxtaposition of feeling weak, wanting care, and feeling strong, like he needed no one. It left him terribly conflicted with himself, and that was never a good thing for him to be.

(Being at war with himself meant he didn’t have control, and if he lost control, he would lose himself.)

He had needed no one his whole life — but three days with the Lovegoods, and he suddenly desperately craved the soft smiles and easy affection. He was hoping that it would all boil down to shock, because otherwise, it simply didn’t make sense, his new position in the world.

He took to walking the odd moors that surrounded the Lovegood house - not a manor, not a mansion, but a house shaped like a Rook. Tom was still puzzling over that, but hadn’t yet built up the desire to ask. What he did know about the Lovegoods thus far was that they were a Noble and Ancient House, qualified for a Lord and Ladyship, and that Luna was using an alternate trust-fund from the Lovegood one - because Xenophilous had gifted him that one. This meant that she was capable of inheriting an alternate title, but he had no idea what.

“Hello, Tom.” Luna called, dreamy and sighing.

Tom glanced up and paused, tilting his head. Luna was standing perfectly still, barefoot and muddied, her eyes on a rather large, mossy looking boulder he didn’t remember being there from his last walk. She was wearing a rather overlarge pale-blue dress made out of a material he couldn’t name.

There were two large pockets on the front of it, and one of them was drenched and heavy looking. She wore pale green and shimmery leggings - also drenched - and there was what looked to be a streak of mud up her arms.

“Luna,” he greeted back, taking a hesitant step forward, “where are your shoes?” He asked.

The girl blinked away from the boulder she stood in front of and looked down. Toenails lacquered a pearly-purple wiggled in the grass, and then she shifted in confusion.

“It’s possible I forgot them by the lake.” She sighed.

Tom hadn’t been aware there was a lake near-by, so he drew closer in interest.

“Why would you have left them there?” He asked.

Luna turned from the boulder fully and her eyes drifted across his shoulders with her response.

“Well, I saw the Gillyweed and I though Neville might like some.” She stated.

He felt himself frowning, and tried to smooth the look out.

“Neville? Who is he and why would he want Gillyweed?” He asked.

Luna hummed in thought and drifted towards him slowly.

“Neville is Hari and Hermione’s best friend. He’s a Hufflepuff, and quiet keen with Herbology. It will be his birthday soon.” She explained. They finally came even, and Tom nodded slowly.

“Why don’t we go get your shoes? You’ve not told me about Harry and Hermione yet.”

(And Luna had talked to him about a lot of things in regards to Hogwarts over the last two days, but nothing about these supposed friends of hers.)

Luna took to the invitation to share like she did most things, with a pleased smile and a slow, slightly dazed blink. It was again odd to think this girl, who’d offered him kindness even knowing what he was, was unused to being listened to.

(He wondered if these friends she referenced were like the ‘friends,’ from his time. Willing to associate with her and speak to her, but with some ulterior motive in mind.)

“Oh, Hari and Hermione are in my House! I didn’t become friends with them until halfway through my first year, when Hari discovered the Nargles were taking my things and hiding them. He helped me get them all back, and then he introduced me to Hermione.” She started, easily leading him into the woods.

Tom made a sound of acknowledgment, and that seemed all she needed to keep talking.

“Hermione has a hard time accepting that there are simply some things not written in books, but she’s alright besides that. She’s actually very kind - and very fierce. Hari teases that if she was a little less book smart and a little more reckless, she’d have made a decent Gryffindor, because she’s not afraid of defending her friends.”

Tom was rather sure he wouldn’t like Hermione, for that alone. Gryffindor’s drove him crazy.

“Neville is in Hufflepuff, like I said, and he used to be very shy and nervous. Hari says Neville has more steel in his spine than the Eiffel Tower! I rather believe it, since he sometimes looks at people who are misbehaving and they start behaving instead. Hermione says it’s due to being friends with Hari. He stumbles into a lot of trouble all by himself.”

Tom tilted his head at her in question, just as they broke through a wall of bushes, and he suddenly found himself on the edge of a lake. Luna’s eyes blinked slowly, then her attention drifted along the shore, moving forward with slow steps.

“Even if they don’t believe in the things Daddy and I know about, they’re still very kind. Hermione will even let me talk about Daddy’s adventures, and Hari bought a subscription to the Quibbler as a show of support.” Luna continued.

“So they’ve never seen your creatures either?” He asked.

(A small portion of him that had been wondering if these creatures were a recent discovery relaxed.)

Tom caught sight of a pair of bright pink trainers, the canvas cloth looking a little damp. There were two rumpled, rolled socks in mustard yellow laying over the top of them.

“Oh, not to my knowledge.” Luna agreed, and tentatively crossed the smooth stones and dark sand towards the rock she’d placed them on.

“How do you know they’re real, then?” He asked curiously.

Luna paused in unrolling her socks, then blinked over at him curiously.

“The same way you know magic is real.” She stated matter of factly.

While she had a fair point, Tom maintained his disbelief.

“I would still prefer to be able to see for myself.” He stated.

Luna smiled slowly, absently at him, even as she slipped her socks on, then shoved her feet into her shoes.

“Seeing isn’t always believing, Tom.” She stated.

Tom might have argued that, except she looked up at him - she focused on him and smiled, and it was all warmth and acceptance. Instead of informing her that he was, in fact, the kind of person that needed proof for things, he kept his opinions to himself and turned away.

“It’s your turn to make lunch.” He called instead.

Luna bounced up to his side just as he crossed back through the bushes. She didn’t respond, didn’t argue. She simply let a steady silence settle between them, and that was, perhaps, the most comforting thing he’d been given since he woke up dazed in the Rook House.

There was a letter from Gringotts waiting for him when he got back. Included were his copies of legal documents, which he tucked away, and a small ledger with written recommendations about what might be best to revive the stagnant accounts he now controlled. He worked on his response to that for the rest of the afternoon, and sent it off by that evening.

Stranded in a time he hardly understood he may be, but that didn’t mean everything was lost to him. He still had control of some things, and he would hold onto that control with both fists clenched. Tom Riddle hated when someone else was in charge.

* * *

Luna took a seat across from Tom, curling into one of the overstuffed chairs with a book in hand. A quick glance told her that he was occupied by the book he held in his hands, his brow furrowed in thought. She found herself staring at him again — not an unusual occurrence, in the week since the bank.

(In the five days since their walk.)

Ever since she’d _seen_ him, it had been hard not to look. There were so many faces to his personality, so many hidden avenues. She’d felt bad about the secret looks, at first, but then she realized Tom knew she was looking and hadn’t asked her to stop.

She wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing, and there were too many faces of him for her to tell.

(And one of those faces, the one that was darkness and shadows and rage, hadn't seemed to mind her looking.)

“Anything interesting in my face today?” Tom asked, and quirked an eyebrow at the book in his hands.

Luna allowed herself to blink, then peered closer at him.

“You’re suffering from a very deep thought, but it’s still unsettled, so I won’t inquire after it. Unsettled thoughts that are interrupted eat settled thoughts, you know.” She shared easily.

Tom’s eyes—

(Deep blue, so blue, like the ocean; crashing-taking-drowning. The dark heart of the sea always just beneath the surface.)

Tom’s eyes lifted to hers and she found herself struggling to look away. The eyes were windows to the soul, just as much as a face was. She couldn’t afford to fall into Tom’s soul — she didn’t have even a bit of beaten copper on her, to ward off memories.

“How do you define settled thoughts?” He asked.

Luna blinked and realized she was staring at his shoulders, let her eyes drift up to his jaw curiously.

“As thoughts that know what they are, of course.” She sighed easily.

Tom’s lips frowned, and she wondered what she’d said wrong this time.

“What if they never settle?” He asked.

Luna tilted her head slowly in response, giving herself time to consider him, not wanting to say the wrong thing again.

“Then they become ghost thoughts.” She shrugged.

Tom’s frown didn’t go away, but it didn’t get worse either. Perhaps it was the tone she was using?

“What do ghost thoughts do?” Tom asked.

Luna settled back further into her chair and contemplated the splashes of possibilities that hovered around him. Nothing new, but nothing helpful either. She was rather alright with that.

“Ghost thoughts are thoughts or ideas that resurface from time to time, haunting you for a bit. If they still don’t settle, they keep on being ghosts,” she explained slowly.

Tom stared at her for a minute longer, then slowly nodded, looking perturbed. He didn’t lapse into quiet, like Luna half expected him to. Instead, he lay his book down in his lap and motioned to it with a single hand.

“Can you explain the idiocy of this last war to me?” He asked.

Luna, having seen what this boy might have become in his darkest moments, blinked at him in amused surprise, before she stood from her chair and slipped onto the couch next to him, peering over the page he’d motioned to.

“Ah,” she sighed, “you don’t agree with the Dark Factions statements about blood-supremacy?” She asked.

Tom gave her a sidelong look that was thoughtful and searching.

“No. Anyone with half a brain can ask a muggle-born to get a blood-inheritance test, and they will be, in some fashion, linked to a squib line. Muggle-born are really nothing more than half-bloods that have resurfaced in an otherwise inactive line of magic.” He explained.

Luna contemplated how many people this version of Tom Riddle might have convinced of this fact in his own time, but did not look into the portion of his Possibilities that would have told her. Those would die soon. Knowing the information inside them would help nothing.

“As true as that may be, enough angry people in a group can be told the simplest lies and mob-mentality will have them believing it whole-heartedly,” she shrugged, settling deeper into the space next to him and cracking open her own book - which she then turned upside down, just to see if there any hidden messages.

“You're suggesting a whole group of people that should have known better decided they wanted to destroy more than they wanted a functioning society?” Tom demanded.

Luna squinted at what was most assuredly a warning about Helipoaths, but replied all the same.

“It’s not as though it happened overnight, Tom. It took years for the Dark Factions policies and opinions to get so convoluted. You can track it best by looking up old Ministry Records about bills passed and Legislation put forth.” She offered on a faint breath.

Tom went quiet next to her, and Luna flipped her book back upright after she’d scribbled down the message she’d seen in the margins.

“How does one go about looking up Ministry Records?” Tom inquired slowly.

“Oh very easily. Simply send a letter to Gringotts, and ask them for all records and submissions that pertain to what you're curious about. They’ll charge you a fee for the services, but it’ll get done faster than if you go to the Ministry Archives yourself,” here she paused to give him a very serious look, “especially since the Ministry is a dangerous place. They have an Army of Heliopaths in the basement.”

One of Tom’s eyebrows rose, and she could tell he was doubting her again.

“What, exactly, are Heliopaths?” He asked.

Luna was all too happy to tell him.

(Xenophilous Lovegood returned to check on Luna and Tom, muddy from a brief hunt through the forests to find the two still sitting there, bickering back and forth over the different creatures that the Ministry most assuredly had locked in its many basements. Xeno smiled and moved along - there was no need for an intervention here, and he desperately need a shower after that brief altercation with a Snuffling-Switzer-Stone.)

* * *

It was three weeks since the bank - the middle of July, in 1994. It had taken him this long and several re-reads of the recent history books he’d gotten to accept his slightly shaky place in the world. To understand how far a version of himself had fallen. To realize that the soft smiles and the tender affection that the Lovegood’s handed out weren’t stopping, and that he probably wouldn’t ever stop craving them.

(The affection was a slightly less important issue than this realities version of himself. This world’s Tom Riddle vanished after Hogwarts, returned briefly, and then slipped quietly into obscurity. He couldn’t track his own movements, and it had frustrated him at first, but he’d come to accept it now.)

This version of Tom Riddle had gone mad. He wasn’t sure how or why, but the man had gone off his rocker and straight into a lake. He did not intend to follow the same path — which meant that aside from his political ideals, he was stepping away from all the little projects he’d been tinkering with.

Finding a way to avoid death would have to wait - in fact, he could go a long time without ever thinking about Death again - as would the various spells he’d been fiddling with to make himself stronger.

While the rites and rituals he’d been rough-drafting to that point were meant to make him physically able to withstand duress - like a building falling on him, or Billy and his gang cornering him in a crumpled room - he was no longer willing to risk the possibility that performing them may have altered his mind.

(Besides, he’d no longer need them here, in this time. There was no muggle war going, and the Lovegoods, despite his reservations about how long they’d actually _let_ him stay, were not violent people.)

The most violent he’d ever seen Xenophilous Lovegood was when the man ate. He ate with gusto, like every meal would be his last and he intended to enjoy it as wildly as possible. It was a far cry from his daughter. Luna, even in that moment, was staring absently at her toast, picking at her breakfast.

(Getting the girl to eat was, perhaps, the most difficult thing about living with them. For whatever reason, Luna Lovegood had a hard time concentrating in the morning. She was fine at other times, would pick at her food with single-minded determination, but the mornings were the most trying - and notably the only meal her father was always there for. Tom himself wasn’t even sure how or when he’d come to care about these things.)

Suddenly, an alarm went off through the kitchen, and both Luna and Xeno stopped eating to look at each other with barely contained glee. Then they were off, both of them out of their chairs so fast the furniture tipped over. They were out the back door, large looking fishing nets held in hand, and Tom was slowly standing and crossing to the window over the sink. They were running around in erratic circles outback, directing each other nonsensically and slapping the nets onto the ground.

Tom watched them do this, sipping his tea and breathing and simply trying to come to terms with the fact that this was his life now, at least for however long he stayed with them. He was still skeptical about him being entirely welcome with them, if he was honest.

(Luna had seen, knew about him but had said nothing yet. She’d seen the darkness that lived in him, but instead of turning away, she’d stared back in fascination. It hadn’t been the sick, worshipful fascination of Lestrange, who was as Dark as all his ancestors before him, but a searching, watchful fascination. Eventually, he knew, that fascination would fade and he would be asked to leave.)

Finally, Xenophilous slapped his net down . . . And he was promptly drug off his feet. The man was pulled violently for ten feet before Luna tossed her net over his and yanked. Together, they pulled . . . Something back towards the shed he’d been asked not to go near. Xeno laughingly flicked his wand at the door, and the two disappeared, and were back again in two minutes.

(Luna started back towards the house, and Xeno slipped back inside the shed and Tom stared in discomfort.)

Tom watched as Luna approached, mind blank and entirely unsure how to process what he’d seen. Or hadn’t seen. There hadn’t been anything in the net to him, but something had been dragging Mr. Lovegood towards the woods. Tom hadn’t been able to make out a shape within the slightly bloated net, but the Lovegoods had just drug something into their shed. 

(The small bit of proof that something he hadn’t been able to see had been very real and very much caught made him nervous. Because what if? What if there were animals most people couldn’t see? What if Wakspurts and Nargles were real? What if Luna wasn’t simply making things up? This was very disconcerting for the boy inside Tom who was an academic, and even more disconcerting for the creature inside Tom that thought it was the superior monster.)

“Oh Tom,” Luna cried as soon as she was in the house again, “it’s amazing! We’ve caught a Split-toed Blubberwart!” She crowed.

Tom stared at her and couldn’t help that in that moment, he was speechless for reasons besides the unnerving possibility that there were invisible creatures. Because Luna Lovegood was framed by the doorway and the morning sunlight behind her made her radiant.

Her hair was lit like white gold, her eyes a shimmering, luminous silver. Her smile was wild, giving warmth, the slightest of dimples to her left cheek making her appear impish. There were grass-stains on her pale jeans, and mud on her bare feet, and her sparkly, deep pink shirt with the flower patches was slightly askew on her shoulders.

( _Shiny_. So very shiny. Shiny and warm and living. The darkness inside him wanted to pluck out her eyes and keep them for itself. The boy he was wanted to clench her smile close, hold it so tight in both fists so that it could never, ever leave him. He’d never been able to ignore things that were shiny.)

“It was the biggest one I’ve ever seen, Tom!” Luna continued, skipping towards him and bouncing on her muddy toes.

(It was with slow-building horror and wild fascination that Tom realized, in that terrible-wonderful-frightening moment, some portion of himself had claimed Luna Lovegood. Some part of him had recognized her as a treasure he wanted to keep and hold.)

Her smile went impossibly wider underneath his gaze, and her eyes, they were fully focused on him. It was like the bank all over again. She was watching him back and she was open and accepting and joyous. There were no quick glances when she thought he wasn’t looking back. No secret watchfulness.

(Or perhaps, Luna Lovegood had claimed him. It hardly mattered with the realization that he would never willingly leave her to her own devices. She was far too warm and far too soft, and despite himself, he liked her. She smiled at him like he was a person. If he left her on her own, someone else might come along and break her.)

Tom felt his lips twitch into a slow, feral smile.

“That’s wonderful, Luna. What will you do with it now you’ve caught it?” He asked, truly interested, when he had some proof that her creatures probably existed.

Luna’s eyes damn-near twinkled up at him, but it wasn’t as irritating as when Dumbledore’s eyes did the same.

“Study it of course! Would you like to join us?” Luna asked.

(The creature that was Tom Riddle purred inside his chest, and Tom’s smile grew. It was an unfortunate fact now that he would never, ever leave Luna Lovegood, but she might wish he had, when she realized what everyone always did.)

“I’d love to. There is something to your creatures after all, and I’d hardly be a good sport about it if I didn’t learn as much as I could.” He agreed.

Luna’s smile seemed to freeze, being quickly overtaken by an expression of awe.

“You mean you’re really starting to believe me?” She asked, so quiet.

Too quiet. He was suddenly worried he might have done some damage with their tiffs over the truth to her creatures.

“How can I not when you and your father just caught some invisible . . . something?” He returned, watched as her smile started to grow back, but was somehow impossibly softer.

“No one’s ever been willing to believe me before.” She whispered, and looked so overjoyed by the prospect of him believing her that he was stunned by the gentleness.

He’d put that smile there. He’d made her look that gentle. Tom had no idea what to do with this realization any more than he knew what to do over the fact that he’d claimed Luna Lovegood. So instead of doing anything, he let her usher him into the study, where she pulled out journal after journal, all written by Lovegood men and women, and talked to him about the animals depicted in the pages.

(If the price to pay for Luna’s smiles and the Lovegood home was silliness and unsettling creatures he couldn’t see, he’d gladly make the trade-off.)

* * *

Things had changed, since Tom had decided to believe her about the creatures her family had spent centuries studying. The change was still too new, still too young, for her to put her finger on what, _exactly_ it was, but it was something.

(A knowing, an understanding, always just out of her reach or on the tip of her tongue. Like a particularly difficult word to remember. As someone that had very few of these moments - moments where she was uncertain over something - she was both exhilarated and nervous.)

Tom, for the most part, appeared unchanged. Though — he smiled at her more easily, less like he was uncomfortable with the expression his face was making, and more like he truly enjoyed the quirk of his lips.

(Like he enjoyed smiling at her as much as she liked seeing his lips twist in that certain, tiny way they did.)

She leaned back, away from the canvas she’d been painting on in the middle of the Yellow Parlor, to contemplate the colors and shapes and figures she’d been painting absently. She was slightly alarmed to find that one of them was Tom, sitting in quiet a lazy manner, what might be a book propped open in his lap. The figure leaning close to him on the couch - a couch that could only be the colorful, patchwork one from the Rook House’s family room - could only be her.

It was very rare that her hands let her paint such things. (Usually, she unconsciously painted a knowing or a vision.) It was soft-serene-content, all gentle lines and unworked shadows. The painting itself had so much potential. Much like the thing on the tip of her tongue did - the Knowing she couldn’t quite grasp was rife with potential.

(With so many things Luna couldn’t name them all.)

“It looks rather good.” Tom’s voice startled her enough that she felt herself jump, her hand flying up to cover her heart where it started beating double-time in her chest.

Tom’s feet rounded the small space she’d marked out with spare, paint-smeared sheets, and then he was crouching down across from her, his face twisted in wry amusement.

“My apologies. I did knock, but you were occupied,” he said slowly, blue, blue eyes tracing the lines of her painting.

Luna shook her head, mute with the wild drumbeat of her heart and the burn in her cheeks, and she reached for a rag to distract herself. She had the soft blues she’d used as shadows streaking down her hands and arms, yellow on her fingertips, and oddly enough, a brilliant red line down her left forearm.

Curious, Luna let her gaze drift over the painting, looking for the red. She found it in the cheerful-looking outline of carnations sitting in the window to the left of her and Tom’s painted faces.

“Did you need me for something?” Luna asked, feeling able enough to speak through the pound of her heart.

Tom blinked away from the painting below him to glance up at her, and he smiled — smirked, really, the twist of his lips was small enough that it might not have counted for anything else.

“Lunch is ready.” He offered.

Luna blinked, and realized quite suddenly that she was ravenous.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Luna admitted, feeling no shame in the way her stomach grumbled.

Tom eyed her hands with faint interest, then stood and rounded back towards her, offering his own hand down. Luna took it slowly, caught by the long-fingered-bluntness of his hands —

(In some visions, they were long and spidery and clawed — and right that moment, at least one version of him was still spidery-fingered and clawed.)

But when she looked back up at him, she was caught by the unexpected realization over what the Knowing - a Knowing that had bothered her ever since Tom had quietly started working his way through her Family’s journals with intent fascination - was. It was so simple, so unexpected, she wasn’t quite sure how it had evaded her, until that moment.

(But perhaps the image in front of her helped, just a little. Perhaps it was seeing her hand, smeared with faint color, and curled into his own. Or maybe it was the soft light over his face as he looked down at her — the gleam in eyes a deep ocean blue, sharp and seeing and focused. Maybe it was simply that she was in-tune with herself, for the first time since . . . Sometime, realized that her heart was _still_ pounding too hard in her chest, despite the fact she was no longer startled.)

Tom Riddle was much more than she’d ever thought he was. He was more than she’d ever been allowed to believe or see. And she had developed an entirely unexpected crush on him.

“Oh,” Luna breathed, and made herself stand, ignoring the questioning tilt of Tom’s head.

If she looked too hard, she might tell him, and even with how much she wanted to be honest with him she knew one thing absolutely. Tom, as he was at that moment, would have no idea what to do with her admitting freely that she _liked_ him. So.

(So for right then, she would eat the lunch he made and come to terms with feelings that had snuck up on her, and hope that she didn’t break her own heart. Boy’s like Tom, after all, rarely looked away from the stars they were reaching for — and she knew that was where his focus was-is-always-had-been.)

* * *

Xenophilius Lovegood left very abruptly, there one day and then running out of Rook House like a hurricane the next. Tom had come down expecting to make breakfast and found the whole house whirling and twirling, things floating wildly towards an open briefcase on the kitchen table while Xenophilius dashed around madly.

Luna had been sat at that kitchen table, dazedly watching the briefcase getting filled. Xeno had been the one to distractedly explain that he’d gotten a tip over a giant, Magical Elk, about how he’d be gone until he found it and written something substantial about it and the way it had been terrorizing a muggle logging town.

“It will be quiet a feature for the Quibbler!” The man proclaimed, and the briefcase clicked shut.

The dotty man leaned down to plant a kiss on his daughter's head, then to Tom’s surprise, he was pulled into a hug before the whirlwind of a man was gone, vanishing into the Floo with an excited laugh. Luna had looked unbothered the whole time, or held the appearance of not being bothered. There was a certain tightness to her jaw that he’d never seen before.

“Are you hungry, Luna?” He asked, softly.

Luna blinked at him, and then nodded slowly, looking suddenly relived.

“I’m sorry Tom. I meant to make breakfast today.” She sighed.

Tom shrugged as he drifted past her, pulling out everything they’d need for some porridge. It would be quick and simple, and better yet, Luna was more likely to eat it if there was a whole meal in a bowl and not multiple things all on a plate.

(She spent too long separating her eggs from her toast, or sequestering her potatoes in the very center of her plate.)

“I haven’t heard anything from Hogwarts yet. Did they change the dates they sent out letters?” He asked.

It took a minute for Luna to respond.

“Oh, I suppose they have. I’m not sure when they changed it though. I’ve always gotten mine July twenty-third.”

She cooed, and Tom contemplated that sending the letters on the eighteenth would really be more appropriate. He wondered why they’d made the change, but didn’t put any more thought into it, sparing a glance at the colorful, overlarge calendar on the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen and dining room.

(It was charmed to update itself, likely because the residents of the house were terrible at keeping track of dates.)

It was July twentieth. It had only been five days since he’d come to the uncomfortable realization that he was attached to Luna - and to some degree Xenophilous -and he would have three more days before they heard anything from Hogwarts. He wished he could choose to skip those days, especially now that Xeno was no longer available as a slight buffer. He enjoyed Luna’s company - far more than he’d ever enjoyed anyone’s company - but he didn’t know what to do, now that he realized she _mattered_.

The morning Prophet came just then, and Tom flicked the kitchen window open wandlessly. He settled in across from Luna with the paper, passing her the pages she tended to steal from her Father - the sections that generally covered lost animals or rubbish for sale, or small stories about shop-keepers - while he skimmed through the main headlines.

“Tom?” Luna asked softly, just as he was getting up to finish their breakfast.

He made a small, absent sound, and Luna took it as a cue to continue speaking.

“Are we friends?” She asked.

Tom hesitated in pouring in a tad more milk to the porridge, then continued on, something . . . Odd clenching around his heart.

“Would you say we are? I’ve — well, I’ve never had an honest friend before. People _others_ would call my friends were only ever friendly with me because they wanted something.” He replied slowly.

There was a briefly thoughtful silence, and then Luna appeared out of the corner of his eye, drifting over to the cold-storage shelves to pull out berries and nuts.

“I would say we are. I really like spending time with you. You always have interesting things to say, or a point of view I hadn’t thought of. I certainly hope that I haven’t been a bother to you?” She replied, still so refreshingly honest.

Tom felt his lips twitch into a smile that didn’t feel odd on his face.

“Then yes. I suppose you could say we’re friends.” He confirmed.

Luna went still next to him, where she’d come to place the berries and nuts, and then she seemed to relax all at once, almost seeming to melt over the counter.

“I’m glad you're here, Tom. I get so lost when Daddy leaves, I sometimes forget I’m real.” She whispered.

Tom was still trying to figure out what that even meant, days later, after another quiet breakfast where she managed to eat her food with only some distractedness. Unfortunately, Luna continued to be a rather intriguing mystery, despite his best efforts to figure her out. Perhaps that was what he liked best about . . . Having her as a friend.

(It still felt odd, to give her a title like that. It felt odd and right, and it made him angry-confused-hurt if he thought about it too hard. It had taken him until he was fourteen bloody years old to make a friend, a _real one_ not a _fake one_ , and he’d had to take a trip through the Temporal Field to do so.)

Tom had trouble sorting his emotions that weren’t very clearly anger, rage, or indignation on the best of days. Trying to sort through his now was exhausting, and left him sprawled on the couch in the living room, pretending to read while Luna did something in the kitchen.

(He suspected she was trying to make a lunch, but she’d been extra distracted since the previous afternoon, so he remained dubious over how well this lunch would turn out.)

“We’ve got our Hogwarts letters!” Luna called from the kitchen, and Tom blinked past the words on the page he hadn’t really been paying attention to. He was up and moving before he’d acknowledged the intent to move. Luna was sitting on the counter by the sink. There were abandoned food items on the opposite side of the sink - which looked suspiciously like she’d been trying to make sandwiches - and a Hogwarts barn owl drinking water from a perch at the end of the counter. The ends of Luna’s glittery purple skirt had fallen into soapy dishwater.

Tom absently flicked his wand and vanished the water in the sink, then dried her skirt for her before he took his letter from her outstretched hand. Luna didn’t even seem startled by the actions, her eyes absently drifting over her own supplies list. Tom took his up and smirked at the name on the front.

_Mr. T Slytherin,_

_The Blue Room_

_Rook House_

_Devon, near Ottery St. Catchpole_

“Would you mind shopping with Hari and Hermione?” Luna asked him, and when he checked, her eyes were on the far wall, entirely day-dreamy and pre-dotty looking.

He leaned against the sink next to her and watched her absently twirl her hair between her fingers.

“No, I suppose I’ve heard enough about them by now that I won’t be entirely uncomfortable.” He offered.

(Besides that, he had questions for the boy who supposedly ‘destroyed,’ this realities Tom Riddle. Not that he put a lot of faith behind the verdict of the Wixen populace of Magical Britain. Any group of people that dubbed a literal baby as their 'savior' needed reality checks. It was almost sad that fifty years hadn’t much changed the ridiculousness of Magical Britain.)

Luna sent a small, soft smile in his direction.

“Daddy won’t be back in time for shopping, so we can go whenever,” she said slowly, attention drifting down to her swinging feet.

The Floo chimed just then, and Luna slipped down to pad towards it, with Tom following after.

“Luna?” Someone called, and Tom was greeted by the disembodied, floating head of a slightly androgynous boy sitting in ~~their~~ \- in _the_ \- fireplace.

“Hello, Hari!” Luna called, folding down in front of the open call.

Tom felt much more keenly interested in finding out that this was _Harry-who-stopped-the-Nargles_ and also _Harry-the-Boy-Who-Lived-and-hated-it_.

“Luna! Hermione, Neville, and I just got our letters! They’re both staying over right now, and we were wondering when you wanted to do shopping!” The boy greeted, a wide smile splitting the seam of his flame-formed mouth. 

“Oh, Tom and I are available anytime, really.” Luna offered, smiling at the head in a soft manner.

Tom disliked seeing that smile directed at someone else, but managed to beat down his possessiveness enough that he could calmly take a seat in the nearest armchair and sprawl in a manner that would have given Malfoy a hissy fit.

“Tom?” Hari asked in confusion, and Luna blinked at the disembodied head.

“Haven’t you received my letter yet, Hari?” She asked.

The head started to shake, and then its eyes went wide and a small, blurry movement took place.

“The letter! I knew I kept forgetting something! You sent two of them really close together and I responded to the latter one before the former! I never even opened it! I’m such a moron!” The boy exclaimed.

Luna smiled again, and it was a smaller, much more airy thing.

“That’s alright. Read it when you can. Are you all available tomorrow?” She asked.

They got a confirmation, and then the Floo went quiet, after a brief and slightly distracted goodbye. The flames quickly turned red and cheerful, and the girl in front of the fire carefully placed another log over them. Luna shuffled back on her knees and then climbed up onto the seat across from him, smiling at the area around his head in that day-dreamy way she tended to.

“You don’t mind shopping tomorrow, do you?”

Tom shook his head, settling back more comfortably.

“No. It’s fine. I need more clothes anyway. I’m getting rather tired of the same three pairs of shirts and trousers.” He shrugged.

That day they’d gone to the bank, he’d gone as lightly as possible because Xenophilous had insisted on buying. And also because both of the Lovegood’s were horribly, garishly colorful people, and Tom hadn’t wanted them sneaking anything outlandish into his purchases. Now, he held a little more trust towards the girl, and it would be a matter of him spending his own money. Well, his own and whatever Luna insistently pressed on him.

(He could tell from the look in her eyes that she would be pressing some money on him. The Lovegoods took being his ‘Host-Family,’ rather seriously.)

“Yes, I suppose you do need more clothing. And a formal suit.” She mused softly.

Tom was about to ask why he’d need that when the Floo lit up again.

“Luna Love! I don’t know if you can hear me, so I’m leaving a message — I’ve just gotten word from a friend in the Ministry! You need to make sure you add a formal dress and formal suit to yours and Tom’s supplies! I don’t know why, just that you’ll need it. Much love to you both, I’ll see you come Ostara”

Tom stared at the Floo and the fading, distracted-looking head of Xenophilous, then glanced at Luna curiously. She simply smiled back at him, all soft and warm and secretive, and Tom sighed in resignation.

There were never any straight answers with Luna Lovegood.

(He was secretly alright with that. Besides. He had his suspicions.)

* * *

The next morning, Luna was up before he was. She looked well-rested, if slightly dottier than usual, and she’d made them breakfast sandwiches. Tom ate his while eyeing the overlarge sunflowers printed onto her white blouse, and the bright yellow leggings underneath her pale green skirt. There were - he was positive on this - sunflower petal earrings made of real sunflower petals dangling from her ears.

“You’re . . . very colorful this morning,” He noted, and Luna blinked at him owlishly from her place perched on the kitchen counter.

(In the very back of his mind his Monster scowled over the _extra_ colorfulness, because there had to be a reason for it, hadn’t there?)

“I checked my horoscope this morning and it told me sunflowers would be lucky for me.” Luna breathed, picking at her sandwich a bit before she shoved the last couple bites in her mouth and slipped down from the counter.

Tom stood as well, watching her pull on a deep green summer cloak with a large, embroidered sunflower on the left breast. Tom plucked up the deep grey summer cloak he’d gotten after the Bank, only shoving the last of his own sandwich in his mouth when Luna lead him into the living room and towards the Fireplace.

“You have the pouch Daddy gave you for your vault?” Luna asked, eyeing him intently.

Tom nodded, and Luna tossed Floo powder into the Fireplace with a flick of her wrist. They arrived in the Floo room of the Leaky almost right on top of each other, then moved out to the Alley.

“We’re meeting at Fortescue’s — it’s where we usually meet up.” Luna declared, giving him a pleased smile when he flicked the soot off both of them.

“Well then,” he sighed, offering his arm, which she slipped her own into easily, “you best lead the way.”

He was trying not to grimace while he spoke, but he must have failed tremendously.

“You don’t like ice cream, Tom?” Luna asked.

Perceptive, mad girl. He felt his lips twitch into an oddly pleased smile.

“It’s far too sweet. I only tried some once, at Hogwarts — nearly lost my lunch, it was so sugary.” He shared slowly.

Luna hummed in thought, then smiled suddenly.

“Fortescue’s has a slightly bitter cranberry ice cream. I quite enjoy it, with a scoop of orange sherbet. You could try some of mine, if you like?” She offered.

If anyone else had offered him the same, Tom might have taken offense. However, this was Luna, who’d only shown consideration for him - rather than pity.

(She’d noticed he didn’t like mushrooms and stopped making them. She noticed he like Earl Grey tea instead of Lavender and Rose Hip, and started making sure there was Earl Grey for every tea time. Luna, seemingly by her very nature, was considerate of other people.)

“I suppose trying it can’t hurt,” he agreed mildly.

The smile he got in return was so easily given, he’d feel bad if he were a better sort of person, but he wasn’t. He would take as many smiles as he could get, because they were being freely offered, and Luna did so even knowing the truth of him.

They arrived at the ice cream parlor - which was much bigger than he remembered - before her other friends did, and he let her talk him into sampling a handful of bitter ice creams. Most of them - even the sour apple and tart cherry - were too sweet for his tastes. The cranberry, however, was rather bitter enough he didn’t mind it so much.

He got a small cup of it plain, while Luna got a slightly larger cup of it, and two scoops of the orange sherbert she mentioned, which was then covered in toppings. Tom very openly grimaced at hers, to which she seemed to have no problem smiling cheerfully back at him for, and they settled in to wait while Luna indulged.

They’d barely been there a few minutes when they were interrupted.

“Luna!” A female voice called, and then a girl with deep, warm bronze skin and perhaps the wildest curls he’s ever seen was squeezing the blonde girl into a tight hug.

A boy - the same androgynous one from the fireplace - dropped into the seat across from Tom, with another boy more awkwardly folding himself into the one directly to Tom’s left.

“You must be Tom then, yeah?” The boy that could only be Harry asked.

Tom contemplated his creamy, russet complexion, the almost artful way his heavy black hair was braided over one shoulder, and the live-fire of his green eyes a little distantly. This boy was certainly striking, but didn’t seem the type to be the defeater of a Dark Lord.

“Slytherin, Thomas Slytherin, at your service.” He agreed easily, and rather enjoyed the various stages of shock that followed.

“Slytherin? Like — like Salazar Slytherin?” The boy to his left asked in surprise.

This, he supposed, was Neville. He was all dark blonde hair and tall gangly-ness. His eyes, hazel-brown and warm, were the most striking thing about him, but that didn’t change the aristocratic arch to his cheekbones, nor the way he sat with practiced grace. A pureblood, this one.

Tom nodded curtly, scooping up a polite seeming amount of ice cream and popping it in his mouth. The boy - Neville, he had to remind himself - startled out of his shock and flushed.

“Forgive me, I’m Longbottom, Neville Longbottom.” He announced, tipping his head.

(It was a little surprising that they all accepted his new surname so easily. Then again, none of them were Gryffindors.)

This spurred the two Claws across from them, Harry and Hermione - Luna was right, those curls did defy gravity somewhat, but it was simply fascinating watching them sway about - to elbow each other and then rush to introduce themselves.

“I’m Granger, Hermione Granger!” The girl declared, big warm eyes gleaming, plush lips smiling across at him, which — well, it was odd, receiving a smile from someone not Luna.

“And I’m Potter-Black, Hari. That’s Hari spelled like it should be for my ancestor's culture, _not_ British culture.” The boy announced.

(And Tom would admit to some surprise here, because everything he’d read about the Boy-Who-Lived spelled his name as _H-A-R-R-Y_. The specification made sense, given this.)

“Would that be H-A-R-I?” He asked curiously.

The Boy-Who-Lived gave him such a pleased smile, he figured the answer was yes, and then—

“Luna, dear please tell me that’s not _all_ you’ve eaten this morning?” Hermione interrupted, looking worriedly at the cup of ice cream Luna was still steadily making her way through.

The girl blinked away from the treat absently and gave a dazzling smile.

“Oh, no, it was my turn to make breakfast this morning. Tom and I had sandwiches.” She declared, then popped another overlarge spoonful in her mouth.

Tom flinched at the very idea of all the sugar she was eating.

“Oh? That’s wonderful then — we’ll be right back.” Hermione cooed, patting the table near Luna’s hands and then hurrying over to the counter. The boys followed her lead, and he watched them have an intense-looking, whispered conversation while they ordered.

When they came back, Tom found he was grateful he and Luna had gotten here early enough that he had just finished his own ice cream, because looking at the veritable pile of chocolate sauce on Hari’s made his entire jaw ache.

“So,” Hermione started nervously, and Tom found himself putting on a mask for the first time in . . . A while, “Luna’s letter didn’t say — how did you come to be staying with the Lovegood’s?”

Tom gave what he was hoping was a politely nervous look, then turned his attention to Luna. The blasted girl just sent him one of those damned absent smiles and turned her attention back to her treat with gusto.

(He could already tell the sugar was going to be something of a problem in a little while.)

“There was . . . Something of an accident, where I lived before. I ended up being the only survivor. Mother Magic caught me up before I . . . Well, before I died, and deposited me into the Lovegood’s care. We checked with the Bank — I have no living caregivers.” He managed.

He’d originally intended to outright lie to anyone that asked, but that was before he’d taken a look at his Hogwarts letter and realized that Albus Bloody Dumbledore was of course still alive and well, and would probably be trying to tell anyone that would listen that Tom was a bad egg.

(For reasons that had never made sense to him - that infuriated him - Dumbledore had been convinced that Tom was the Magical equivalent to the Second Coming of the Devil. Given what this realities Tom Riddle had done, perhaps he wasn’t so far off — but then again, maybe that might have been avoided entirely if the man had done his bloody job as a _responsible adult_.)

So. Partial truths and whatever the secrecy vow he’d been forced to take would let him reveal. He didn’t much like it, but really, he also hadn’t much liked nearly dying, so he wasn’t going to complain about having to tell some half-truths.

“Oh, that’s horrible!” Hermione gasped, and oddly, he felt she was being sincere in that sentiment.

“Tough break, mate,” Hari agreed, giving him a sad look that managed to not have an ounce of pity, “not sure how I would have handled something like that happening to me, but you look like you’re doing alright.”

Neville nodded along, but both boys were watching him with clear concern, and Tom was wondering if caring was actually something people did in this time, because no one had ever cared in the thirties.

“I’m quite alright, actually, but . . . Thank you for the sentiment.” He declared, ignoring the urge to fidget where he sat.

Hermione’s expression turned from concerned to curiously-confused.

“Are you sure you’re alright? Shock can sometimes last for months you know and losing your loved ones—” he was going to have cut her off right there.

“I didn’t love them. They were caregivers - who very rarely found it in themselves to either care or give. I’ll freely admit that while what happened was . . . Intense, my shock has centered much more over the fact that I am alive and much better off, rather than the fact that they’re dead. But again, thank you for the sentiment.” He stated.

(He was waiting for their eyes to go distant and watchful, for their expressions to morph into frowns. He’d been told often enough his whole life he should feel something for the women that had ‘raised,’ him and the children he was reared with, but he knew that would never happen. Mrs. Cole had been a bigot and a drunk, Martha had been a doormat unwilling to catch Mrs. Cole's ire, and the children they'd reared had been nothing but wolves, scrappy and weak, who’d formed a pack against him because he was odd and refused to conform.)

Luna plucked up his empty cup and tossed both hers and his into the rubbish bin to the side, then looked back to him with dazed, slight eccentric eyes. He wondered if the sugar was already hitting her system.

“It’s alright Tom. It’s like Daddy said. We’re not going to let anyone hurt you - you don’t have to be nervous,” then her eyes drifted to Hermione, Hari, and Neville, “I know you’re worried but you really don’t have to be. Tom and I have become good friends!” She stated, while bouncing the slightest bit.

The three in front of them still seemed to maintain some concern, but they also notably relaxed, if only slightly.

“We have supplies shopping to do,” Luna reminded, and that spurred her friends onto finishing their own treats quickly. Tom was unused to having someone that could actually read him, much less went out of their way to soothe him.

Luna linked their arms together as they walked, bouncing more than slightly, and Tom let himself be lead. There were some shops here he didn’t remember, some that must have sprung up in the last fifty years or so. He had, for instance, never seen the Magical Menagerie before - that had used to be a divination shop.

(He was privately glad that it had clearly gone out of business, because the woman that had run it had always been a touch too handsy for his taste, the very small number of times he’d found himself inside.)

It took a better part of the day to get everything, what with the crowds that came a couple of hours into their shopping. Well, the crowds and the fact that he was in need of more clothing. He hadn’t been lying when he’d stated he was tired of the same handful of shirts and trousers. Of course, this particular bit of shopping took much longer than even he’d expected because after Hari and Hermione found out he needed clothing, an unholy fire lit in their eyes.

“Have you ever shopped in Muggle London? They have some of the _softest_ clothes you’ll ever find!” Hermione declared, with Hari nodding emphatically.

“I’m not sure what your stance on muggle-things is, but honestly, muggle fashion is far preferable to Wizen fashion!” Hari added, then gestured down at himself and Hermione.

He would admit that the soft-looking shirts they wore and the far-tighter-than-he-thought-appropriate jeans did look rather comfortable. He still hesitated, because he would be going into Slytherin house, he knew, and the stance on muggle made clothing in his time had been dim. Neville and Luna were suddenly in on the conversation as well, looking just as excited, if in much quieter ways.

“They really are quite comfortable, Tom.” Luna cooed.

“I’m not sure what all you know about Hogwarts, given you haven’t been attending it, but there are Slytherin students that prefer to spend their weekends in muggle fashion. The 'rules' regarding it have been something of a grey area in the last few years. It wouldn’t be acceptable at a formal function, but just casually? It should be fine.“ Neville announced, clearly the only one among the four who was accurately able to read Tom’s concerns.

Which was alarming in itself, really.

“I suppose we could take a look, but I highly doubt I’ll find anything of interest.” Tom finally muttered.

(Though really, he was relieved. Rook house could get cold, and the Wixen made jumper he’d gotten just wasn’t heavy enough for him. He’d been using warming charms so much, he barely even needed to focus to cast and recast one wandlessly.)

Luna looked at him like he’d given her the shiniest gift she’d ever seen, and then he was being drug towards the Leaky. He was not looking forward to being in London again, and looking forward even less to having to walk through the Leaky of all places.

They stopped just inside the back doors of the pub so that all those wearing robes could remove them and places them in bags - Tom had been very pleased when he’d realized he could afford the black leather satchel that was currently slung over his shoulders. He’d had to buy most things second hand before, had been at risk of the pre-used items suddenly breaking down.

(But no one had ever owned the trunk he’d bought, or the bag he was currently using. Their enchantments were shiny and new, and all _his_.)

They stepped out of the Leaky and Tom stopped short. London was nothing like he remembered. There were electric lights all over the place, not just in the fanciest looking homes. The store fronts and people and everything looked . . . Alien. Alien and not broken and crumbling. Alien and nothing like they should have. How had fifty-odd years changed so much?

“Welcome to London, Circa 1994,” Luna whispered at his elbow, slipping her arm into his.

Tom welcomed the weight, and let her and the over-eager, clearly shopping fiends in front of them lead the way to what they called ‘the best shopping center.’ He very begrudgingly admitted, within a few minutes inside the first store, that Muggle clothing had come a rather long way - at least in some areas. He ended up purchasing an assortment of heavier, softer jumpers, plain cotton shirts and tees, and a handful of trousers and jeans that Hari and Neville shoved at him.

It was exhausting, and Hermione and Hari kept trying to make him wear more colors than Black, grey, white, and green. He did, to his astonishment, not mind the softer blues or more muted greens and yellows that Luna showed him. They were finally done well after noon and returned to Diagon when Hermione declared they’d all forgotten extra parchment.

(Or in Tom’s case, any parchment.)

“Will you and Tom be coming to our Party?” Hari asked Luna, after they’d all piled out of the stationary shop.

The three had seemingly come to some sort of agreement, in between Fortescue’s and Muggle London, that if Luna liked him, they didn’t have anything to be suspicious of. He wasn’t sure how to tell them that Luna had poor self-preservation instinct, and that they should very much be wary of him still, so he’d said nothing at all to their friendly chatter and simply started being himself, rather than distantly polite. The portion of him that was entirely petty disliked that they’d been consistently shrugging off his dry remarks and sharp-to-borderline-rude comments.

“Party?” He repeated.

Luna perked up next to him and gave him an eccentric, excited look that was all too reminiscent of her father.

(And in that look, he could see a much stronger resemblance than he’d originally noted. Not just similar, but strikingly so.)

“Hari and Neville were born just a day apart! They celebrate together.” She shared.

Hari was nodding now, looking just as excited as he had hours before, cooing over Quidditch supplies.

“Yeah, it’s going to be wicked this year! We finally finished fixing up the house, and Siri said he’s going all out on the Courtyard decorations!” The boy added.

“Siri?” Tom asked, feeling a faint stirring of irritation for everything he didn’t understand.

Luna blinked at him slowly, tilted her head, and then nodded sharply before she looked around, then linked their arms and started tugging him towards an alcove where a heavy stone bench was sat. Luna flicked up a ward, and then Hari, Hermione, and Neville all followed. Curious, Tom settled back onto the edge of the bench and watched.

Luna took a seat next to him and turned fully, tucking her legs up underneath herself.

“Siri is Sirius Black, Hari’s Godfather. Up until last year, he was wrongfully imprisoned in Azkaban. Last year, before the start of Hari’s third year and my second, he escaped for some rather . . . convoluted reasons. He spent a whole year breaking into and out of Hogwarts, until finally, the DMLE received _conclusive evidence_ that the man he’d been accused of murdering was both alive and had framed him, and that the Ministry had covered the whole thing up. It was a rather large scandal. I’ll see if I can find the old papers for you - I know I kept them.” Luna explained, if slightly rambled, and Tom took a breath.

“Alright. This Sirius is now your guardian then? Who were you living with before?” He asked, ignoring the sly looks and the smug smirk that had passed between the three people behind Luna while she was describing the ‘ _conclusive evidence that lead to scandal._ ’

“Sirius is my guardian now, yes. My previous ones were . . . Not suitable. Let’s just say that they were magic-hating muggles and leave it at that, yeah?” Hari rushed out, looking distinctly uncomfortable, and Tom felt his jaw tighten in understanding.

“Say no more. I think I understand,” he muttered, then to change the subject, “when is this party?”

“July thirtieth through the thirty-first!” Hari declared, smiling again, all soft and friendly-like.

Tom blinked at him in confusion.

“That’s two days.” He stated.

All four other teenagers around him nodded with small, mischievous smiles.

“How do you hold a party for two days?” He asked, frowning.

Hari Potter-Black’s eyes went wide and excited.

“Oh, he’s never known the joy of a forty-eight-hour party,” he whispered, as some children back in the orphanage used to whisper excitedly when they saw presents at Christmas with their names on them.

Tom regretted asking not long after, as each one of them filled up the space with long, convoluted stories about everything you could do at said forty-eight-hour party. By the end of it, he was shaking his head to try and clear it of what sounded like - to him - absolute nonsense.

He wanted to say he would not be attending, but Luna asked him if he’d attend the event with her with so much hope he begrudgingly accepted. Having a friend whom he actually enjoyed being around was much harder than he’d originally anticipated.


	3. Exceeding Expectations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been suffering from both Real Life Responsibility and 'Haha No' writers block, so this took longer than I wanted. Sorry. Also, the parties were not supposed to last as long as they did, but eh. I think it's sparkly!  
> Next chapter is going to be Hogwarts! (Or the real lead-up to it, depending.)

July the thirtieth, he and Luna packed what Luna called an overnight bag. It consisted of a couple of changes of clothing, sleepwear, toiletries, books, and the presents that Luna had drug him out to get, the day after they’d gone shopping with Luna’s friends.

Tom had gotten both boys a set of quills he’d noted they’d looked at intently, and a journal. Neville’s quills were creamy white, with flowers on the front charmed to bloom and wilt on repeat, his journal embossed with twisting vines.Hari’s quills were various shades of blue, with quidditch balls charmed to fly up and down the lengths. The journal was painted leather, a snitch that changed position in a repeating loop. The gifts were nice enough for a new acquaintance, but the bare minimum of what he was obligated to give.

(Luna’s gifts had looked far more personal. Neville’s a painted jar full of Gillyweed, and a book about the uses of various ‘exotic,’ plants - such as Gillyweed. Hari’s gifts were a statue carved out of Jade in the shape of what she claimed was a Thestral, and a book about the newest theories behind wards with elemental properties.)

They left Rook House in the late afternoon, and arrived into the parlor of a house that was both familiar and not familiar all at once. Hari and a tall, skinny man with a riotous mass of wavy black hair and deep blue-grey eyes were waiting to greet them.

(The man looked lanky and gaunt, like he’d previously been trying desperately to put on weight and was now struggling with the appearance of not-eating-enough.)

“You must be young Thomas!” The man declared, smile all open and wide.

(The Lord Black of his time would eat this one alive and spit him back out in a heart-beat.)

“Yes, Sir. Thank you for having me in your home.” He responded dutifully, easily stepping to the side when the Floo flared behind him.

He waved the soot off of both himself and Luna when she walked through, looking dazed but pleased all in one. Luna forwent the formalities and simply walked right up the Lord, tossing her arms around him in a hug that he returned, looking quietly pleased as he did so.

“Little Luna. Still as airy as ever — tell me, where _did_ you dig this boy up? His manners would have made my Mother weep with happiness.” The Lord cooed.

Luna twisted out of his arms slowly, then moved to give Hari a hug as well while she responded.

“Mother Magic brought him to me. She was quite concerned over him, if you must know, and I’ll ask you not to tease him too badly, Lord Sirius.”

Hari and Sirius both laughed, while Tom pondered over the truth behind Lady Magic being ‘concerned’ for him. Luna turned to him then and smiled wide.

“Would you like a tour?” 

Tom glanced at Hari and Sirius, and dipped his head in a bow before he nodded to Luna. They placed the presents for Hari and Neville in the right area, and then Luna skipped through the halls, chattering away about things that had changed since the first time she saw it, and how they hadn’t done something Hari had written to her about doing, and a whole stream of words that Tom let her speak and Luna was all too happy to give him.

They were eventually found in one of the parlors, going through the books on the shelves there, by Hermione, Neville, and a tall, sandy-haired boy with pale blue eyes. The boy greatly resembled Thaddeus Nott, even if there were facial features that were unfamiliar.

“There you are Luna!” Hermione sighed, smiling wide.

Her curls had been done up into many twists, which fell down her back and over her shoulders. There were sapphire and bronze-colored beads and charms decorating her hair, and a handful of coils on either side of her head had been pulled back and clipped.

She was wearing a royal blue blouse, a pair of semi-translucent leggings that were metallic, and a ‘jean-skirt.’ Tom still maintained that of all the new skirts he’d seen, the jean variety - which fell only to this girls’ mid-thigh - was the most inappropriate — Mrs. Cole would have died of shock had she ever seen someone wearing one.

(Though he’d also freely admit he’d never much cared for how other people viewed clothing in general, since most of society's views were heavily influenced by the Church. And he’d dearly like to see Mrs. Cole faint in affronted shock. So.)

There was a long-sleeved shirt in mustard yellow tied around Hermione’s waist. Neville was dressed in a prim and proper looking shirt and trousers set in deep, warm brown, with a trim waist-coat in honey-gold. The Nott-look-alike was wearing something similar, but in black with a deep blue waist-coat and a light over-robe in pale blue.

“Hello Hermione,” Luna sighed, drifting over to give the girl a hug.

Tom dipped his head in greeting to all three, then turned to carefully place the book he’d been flipping through back on the shelf. When he turned around again, Luna had just stepped back from gifting Neville with a hug, whispering something to the boy that had him beaming a smile.

“Thomas, this is Nott, Theodore Nott.” Hermione offered, waving a hand to the boy at her other side.

Tom nodded again, letting a practiced smile slip into his face. It felt a bit rusty, sitting there. Rusty but familiar. He'd have to start practicing how to be a Slytherin again, since he'd gotten so out of practice in the last few weeks.

“Slytherin, Thomas Slytherin. A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.” He offered.

Nott blinked at him first in surprise, and then in surprised-interest.

“The pleasure is mine. I’ll fully expect you to be in my House then, come this Hogwarts term? Hermione and Neville have been telling me you’ll soon be joining us.” He offered.

He was much more soft-spoken than his . . . grandfather - though it was possible that Old Thaddeus had a child late in life. Regardless. Thaddeus Nott had been one of the sharpest minds Tom knew, and could get away with being a little loud and brash every now and then.

(Of all his _pretend_ friends, Nott had been the most tolerable, next to the ever-amusing Malfoy.)

“I can assure you, given what I have read and heard, you’ll be seeing me in a green and silver tie come September.” He smirked.

Nott returned the smirk for what it was, and dipped his head. They were then ushered towards a courtyard that was bursting with plants, both exotic and native, and lights and pulsing music and movement. There must have been thirty other people in the courtyard. He was just beginning to regret his decision to accompany Luna when she drug him into the gyrating masses.

“Let’s dance Tom!” She called.

It took less than a minute for him to realize that ‘dancing’ had changed drastically in fifty years. It took barely a minute more for him to realize that Luna had no idea what dancing was supposed to look like regardless.

“Luna, you’re going to hit someone.” He warned — shouted, more like, given the unholy volume of the ‘music,’ that was playing.

(Less because he cared if she hit someone, and more because he didn’t want to have to curse someone at her friend's party, should her victim take offense.)

Luna caught sight of him standing - out of range - beside her ~~awkwardly~~ and blinked at him, tilting her head curiously.

“Do you not want to dance?” She asked-shouted, and Tom hesitated only briefly before responding.

(Only briefly because this was Luna, and he found that he had no trouble being honest with her. This would have - maybe should have - disturbed who he had been weeks before.) 

“It’s not so much I don’t want to dance — just that I don’t know these . . . dances.” He finished slowly, eyeing the — highly inappropriate, and in this, his view was not based on what the Church cared for — positions some other teens were in.

Luna slipped a little closer, leaning in so she wasn’t exactly shouting.

“Then dance how you know. That’s what I do - except it’s hard for me to concentrate sometimes on the music, so I never know if I’m hearing it right.”

Tom blinked down at her, then glanced up and around them. They were surrounded on all sides by dancing people, and the music was thrumming around them, and — well. No one would notice if they did whatever they wanted, would they?

“I could teach you?” He offered, holding out a hand.

Luna blinked down at his palm, and then smiled up at him, and he felt his shoulders loosen slightly. She slipped her hand into his, and he walked her through a few steps for a quick swing - a short and jaunty thing, something one of the dance instructors from his childhood had taught only briefly, because it had been considered too involved.

(Given some of the dances going on around him, he was going to say it was just fine.)

They spent the next hour like that, him leading her - a little awkwardly - through quick-paced dances, her laughing outrageously anytime she misstepped. It was . . . Well, it was fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had fun in a public setting.

(All the moments over the last weeks didn’t count. That fun had been exclusively between him and Luna, or both of them and Xeno. He’d come to expect that he would enjoy himself in her company.)

At some point, half of the dance floor was cleared so that Neville could open presents, and Luna sat down to drink punch and watch. The boy looked downright _pleased_ when half of the gifts ended up related to herbology, and then deeply touched when he hefted up the jar of Gillyweed and smiled brightly at Luna. After, they sat for a little longer, Luna getting into an animated conversation with Lord Black before the man drifted off again.

She’d barely really looked at him, but he found himself standing after the Lord had walked away. He was still the one to hold out a hand, his smile slight but there.

“Dance with me?” He asked.

Luna took his hand without hesitation and laughed some more, and they slipped into the crowd that had already gathered again. It felt like hours more before they stumbled away for food and cake, then eventually migrated over to a space where an assortment of games had been set up.

He would never admit it (except maybe to Luna) but Tom actually rather enjoyed himself. He almost forgot that they weren’t returning to Rook House, until much later that evening.

“Tom? Would you like your own room, or did you want to join the sleepover in my room?” Hari asked him, leaning over the table across from him.

He and Luna had claimed a table near the back of the Courtyard, and her friends had been slowly migrating towards it, as the thirtieth started to end. Tom blinked at him - then hesitantly looked to Luna for direction.

“They don’t bite, Tom.” She teased, soft and sleepy, and he found himself smiling slightly at the sight of her, slumped over the table next to him, but heavily leaning towards his shoulder.

“I suppose the . . . _Sleepover_ , in your room would be fine.”

(Primarily because he didn't want to risk getting lost if they placed him somewhere without foot-traffic, and a little bit because he was curious about what a sleepover was.)

He watched Luna droop a little further, and turned his attention to Hermione.

“Where is Luna staying?” 

Hermione flashed a smile at him, all bright and cheerful, and _sleepy_ , standing slowly.

“I’ll take her up.” She cooed.

Tom stood to help anyway, trailing after the two. After, Hari showed him where he’d be sleeping, and Tom claimed the right to the washroom first in the face of the handful of sleepy boys already in the room, murmuring to each other in quiet conversation. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but surprisingly, after he’d changed into loose pants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and chosen a spot to lay down — he dropped off, only faintly aware of someone asking him . . . Something.

(A something he very much ignored in favor of curling further into the blanket he’d been given. Being social was more exhausting than he remembered, even if he’d only spoken to Luna and some of her friends and virtually no one else.)

The next morning he was woken by a couple of other young men that had chosen the ‘sleepover’ in Hari’s room casting a rather loud Caterwauling Charm. The culprits, that Tom could see, where a pair of ginger-menaces that had caused some commotion the night before.

He hadn’t been paying much attention then, because he and Luna had been dancing, and nowhere near whatever trouble they’d caused. Now, he was blindly flinging a couple stinging hexes after them, to the sound of Hari’s (and several other boys) loud cheering.

“Tom, you’re my new favorite person!” The boy declared, hugging his comforter close and drooping. He was also glaring mulishly at the gaping door the two boys had disappeared through.

Tom scowled at the other boy, glared at those around them that appeared much more goodnatured and awake, and then turned to roll back into his blanket. His plan of pretending everyone else didn’t exist died a quick death when there was a soft, almost _airy_ knock on the door, and several of the boys around him let out actual squeals.

“Terribly sorry,” Luna’s voice called, not sounding sorry in the least, “I was just wondering if Tom was up?” She called.

Tom repressed the urge to sigh like a plebeian and instead, sat up and frowned at her.

“What? No, ‘good morning Hari?’ No, ‘happy birthday Hari!’ Nothing, for me, Moon Drop?” Hari called, sounding sleepy and still rather mulish.

Luna passed an amused, absent look at Hari, and another amused look at the boys around the room that were either lounging in various nightwear - the dark, rather too-pretty pureblood in the corner who’d slept in loose pants alone - or rolled into their blankets in embarrassment - Neville looked like a tomato - before she responded.

“I would love to, Hari, but Lord Sirius wanted to be the first to say it to you,” She confided, then her eyes drifted back to Tom, “Good morning Tom. Did I pack my book about the various uses of Billywigs in your bag?”

Tom had already elected that he’d be getting up, was in the middle of folding his blanket and shoving it and the pillow he’d claimed to the side.

“It would be a nicer morning if I’d hit those ginger prats more than once,” he muttered, then tugged his bag onto his shoulder, “a moment, Luna,” He grumbled louder.

He stood and tromped as much as he was able towards the door, then paused to dig through his things until he found that Luna had, in fact, placed her book in his bag by mistake.

“Here,” he offered, then scowled at the room full of boys, who were watching him in various states of too-much-interest.

After he’d claimed the nearest washroom and gotten dressed, he tossed his bag back into Hari’s room as he was passing, ignoring the interested looks being sent to him by Nott and the dark boy in the corner. He further tromped down the stairs much better than he’d tromped across the room earlier, and only gave pause at the sight of curtains over a portrait twitching violently and something giving a muffled shriek.

The area around the portrait looked new, like it had been given a fresh coat of paint - though to be fair, the whole house looked that way - but also worn. Like someone had been chipping at the wall around it to no avail. It piqued his curiosity, especially since Luna had given very little information about it the day before.

“Oh, don’t get too curious about that,” someone cooed, and Tom just barely repressed the urge to jump.

When he turned, the ginger menaces — it did not surprise him that they were twins — were standing at the top of the stairs, grinning down at him crookedly.

They looked like Prewetts, except for their noses. In fact, were their noses a tad larger, they’d be the spitting image of Ignatius Prewett.

“Took forever for us to help Sirius seal her up!” One of them stated.

Tom scowled in response, but unfortunately for him, his own curiosity must have shown, because the two got a rather sly look about them that was almost exact.

“Want to know who it is?” The opposite twin asked, starting down the stairs in tandem with his twin.

“We bet you do!” The other added, grinning.

“If you’re dying to tell me, who am I stop you?” Tom asked slowly, eyeing them suspiciously when they stopped on either side of him. Their eyes, a hazel that was almost blue, if a muddy sort of blue, were far too mischievous for his comfort.

They tried to sling their arms over his shoulders and he easily took a few more steps down, then turned on his heel and continued his trek. They slipped up next to him well before he reached the first floor, but didn't try to touch him again.

“Well, if you really must know,” one of them began,

“That was the portrait of old Walburga Black,” the other started, and Tom was beginning to see the pattern.

“Lord Black’s late mother—”

“Nasty old Portrait, she was—”

“Always screeching venom about blood purity and classicism—”

“Without having anything of real substance to say, you know?” They finally ended in sync, their smiles sly and sharp.

Tom found he wasn’t exactly surprised. Walburga, even in his time - reality? - had been a rather . . . Outspoken girl. That she’d grown into an outspoken and venomous woman wasn’t baffling. What was surprising was the way her son had turned out despite that.

(Though internally, he had no problem admitting that even the most placid of personalities hid the worst sort of memories. Lord Black appeared happy and chipper, but he was also a man only recently released from Azkaban and still healing from it. Ignoring the memories of an unpleasant childhood was likely nothing to trying to ignore memories of the most feared prison in the Magical North, but Tom wasn't about to make assumptions.)

“Ah, I see.” Tom hummed, and then gave no warning when he stopped abruptly, pointed his wand at them, and cast a similar caterwauling charm to the one they’d used on the sleeping residents of Hari's room.

The way they jumped nearly a foot and gaped at him with startled expressions — expressions that were only slightly different — was almost satisfying. Tom gave them the coldly polite smile he’d used to both strike fear into others, and soothe those around him in the last four years.

“Don’t look so startled!” He cooed, moving past them again and ignoring the curious creak of wood to his right, “Fair is fair, yes?” He asked, and then slipped into the dining room.

He was immediately pleased to find that it was actually the dining room, because it would have been awkward if he’d gotten it wrong and needed to go looking. Those already present were watching the door when he walked through, and Hermione blinked at him from her seat at the table curiously.

“Did Fred and George try to pull _another_ prank?” She asked.

Tom shrugged quietly as he slipped into the seat next to Luna, a seat he’d been about to walk past, except she moved her feet from it and sat up straight, smiling at him in welcome. There was already a cuppa sitting in front of it. Tom took a sip and smiled, then glanced up to where seats were swiftly being filled. It was mostly children at the table with them, but there were a few adults.

One of them was a thin, pale, dour-looking man with long black hair and dark robes. His eyes were equally as black and bottomless, and were it not for the fact that there was something faint and familiar in them, Tom would have given him very little thought. As it was.

The way this man was watching him back was . . . Disconcerting.

“Fred, George? Are you alright? You look a bit lost.” Someone else called.

Tom managed to look away from the adult, and over his shoulder, where Hermione’s gaze was trained. The ginger menaces were standing in the doorway and staring at him in a mixture of confusion and amusement.

“Well, we were just wondering—”

“Who this bloke here is?”

They started, their broken speech very definitely a pattern, and Tom took a sip of tea slowly, then turned back around when he felt Luna nudge him. He only distantly heard Nott, who had just come in, introduce him, but his interest was on the page Luna was showing him in her book.

“It says this potion is rather easy. I was thinking of trying it when we got back home.” Luna confided, leaning over her armrest to study the illustration on one page distantly.

“ . . . Do we have dragon blood in the house?” He asked, eyeing the list of ingredients.

Luna hummed again, and then shrugged her shoulders.

“If not we could order some - or go to Diagon.” She sighed.

Tom nodded, sipping his tea again before he reached out to flip the page. He grimaced at the amount of Flobberworm Mucus actually needed, but was intrigued enough at the idea of a potion that detected invisible things that he nodded to Luna in agreement.

“That does seem interesting.”

The chairs to his right squeaked when they were pulled out, and then the twins were sitting in them. He felt more than saw the sharp warning look that Hermione shot them, and came to the conclusion they were likely to try pranking him.

(Given that Hermione had used the word ‘another,’ with such exasperation he was sure that the two were notorious pranksters. Rather like the Prewett boy he recalled from his own . . . Reality? He still had no bloody idea what the right terminology should be.)

A couple of minutes later, a loud shout came from the hall beyond the door.

“Happy Birthday PUP!” Lord Black’s voice echoed - a sure sign he’d used a Sonorus Charm - and he was rather proud he only flinched slightly.

“Sirius! Not so bloody loud!” Hari’s voice shouted back, but it sounded mirthful.

Another voice, soft and soothing, said something, and a burst of laughter echoed again. A quick glance down the table showed that the pale, dark man was now scowling at his cup rather than watching Tom intently, and the couple other adults in the room all look exasperated.And then the door was flung open and Lord Black came bounding in, looking far too excited. He was followed shortly by Hari, who was wearing extremely casual muggle clothes, and another adult. This man was sandy-haired and scarred, wearing a comfortable looking jumper, and smiling wide at Hari’s back.

“Alright everyone! Up! Up! It’s time to sing happy birthday!” Lord Black shouted.

Hari’s cry of protest was loud, his hands waving sharply.

“No! No, Sirius, really! That can definitely wait until the cake! Remus tell him!” The boy shouted back, looking to the sandy-haired bloke pleadingly.

Remus — who Tom only vaguely recognized from the night before — gave the Lord Black a chiding look, and as a result, the man seemed to forcibly subdue himself, though he looked exasperated to be doing so.

“Fine! Fine. No singing yet. Honestly!” He barked, then huffingly pulled out a chair for Hari. The food at the table seemed to increase two-fold when the boy sat down, and they enjoyed a mostly quiet breakfast.

(One where the twins to his right tried to prank him no less than six times in the span of forty minutes. They seemed both pleased and confused when each attempt ended up hitting someone other than Tom.)

Finally, when everyone was done eating, they were all ushered into a large sitting room, and Remus — whose surname Tom still hadn’t been able to discern — started walking around handing out odd objects. Objects Tom only realized were port-keys when he was handed one. His — theirs, he corrected, when he heard the order to ‘buddy up,’ — was a length of braided twine.

Luna leaned over to peer at the one they’d be sharing, and then shuffled closer to him when Nott suddenly appeared, smile slight but calculating.

“Mind if I share with you? Blaise and Neville are sharing with Hermione, and I’m not all that comfortable with some of the other people here.”

Tom dipped his head in a nod, even as Luna exclaimed that 'of course' he was welcome. He wondered if Nott, like him, was close to only one person at this event, and had only come to keep that person company.

“Neville,” the boy announced, distant amusement in his eyes as he watched Tom back, “I’m friends with Neville — and Hari, but I only became friends with Hari and Hermione through Neville.”

(Tom was beginning to realize he’d have to work harder on rebuilding his mask, because no one should have been able to so easily discern his thoughts after knowing him for less than a day. Luna didn’t count. She was Luna.)

“I don’t suppose you know why we’re all being handed port-keys?” Tom asked the other Slytherin.

Nott frowned then, glancing over his shoulder to where Lord Black was excitedly saying something to Hari.

“I’m not entirely sure, actually. I know from Neville talking that he and Hari chose their own events for their parties, which is why Neville’s took place in a garden. I don’t know that anyone but Hari and his guardians know what Hari planned.”

That was more disconcerting than the tall, dark, pale fellow that was watching him again. Hari struck him as the type of person that chose activities more than he chose general socializing, and Tom had been quite comfortable with choosing to (not) socialize the night previous.

“Who’s the pale bloke in the black robes?” He asked, not taking his eyes off of where Hari was now gesturing wildly around him.

A small silence, and then Nott spoke again, voice just subtly quieter.

“That’s Professor Snape.” Lovely. Another Professor in a short string of them that had some bizarre fascination with him.

“He’s also Lord Prince,” Luna shared, voice just as quiet, and that was shocking enough that he glanced down at her.

Her eyes were trained on the ceiling, almost absent in their interest.

“He’s Lord Prince and a Potions Master, and the Head of Slytherin House.”

She shared, eyes flickering to him only briefly before she lay a hand on his arm. It only occurred to him as she was doing so that his fist had clenched over the braided twine in worry.

“He’s a good man, even if he likes to pretend he isn’t.” She soothed.

(It, surprisingly, went a long way towards calming him down, her soothing him.)

“Yes, well, don’t go telling everyone that, Lovegood.” Nott chuckled, and Tom pretended like he wasn’t startled to remember that the other boy was still standing there.

“He’s the Potions Professor, I take it?” He asked his fellow Slytherin.

Nott’s expression went sly and thoughtful again, cool blue eyes flickering over Tom’s face questioningly.

“One of the best. Abrupt in his manners, to be sure, and rightfully biased towards Slytherins, but he knows his way around a Cauldron better than the people that smelt them. Lord Malfoy says he’s the best Head of House Hogwarts has seen in a hundred and fifty years, and the most academically accomplished wizard of his time.”

The tone of voice used to state all of this would fool someone else into thinking it was freely given, but Tom could read the expectation in the other boys' tone. The statement in-between the words that said ‘ _I don’t have to be telling you this, but I am, and it’ll cost you information of equal value._ ’

Nodding with the most neutrally polite smile he’d given since waking in Rook House, Tom relaxed and let Luna link their arms together, just as Sirius let out a sharp whistle.

“Everyone! Grab your port-keys and hold on tight!” He announced, then started a count-down.

Luna obligingly reached out to clutch the middle of their port-key, and Nott grabbed the end of it. Around them, others hurried to do the same, and finally —

Finally, they were being spun round and round even while they stood in place, the world shrinking and squeezing away from him through a rubber tube. The next thing he knew, they were knocked to their knees in a large, empty field, where several adults he didn’t recognize from the previous day were setting up tables and chairs with magic.

Among them was a trio of pale blonde heads, and Tom would have recognized the Malfoy Lord and Heir when they turned from three miles off and half-asleep. The older looked startlingly similar to Abraxus. The same harsh jaw, even if it was older than the jaw he was used to, the same shape of the eyes. The younger Malfoy had slightly more delicate — slightly more pointy — features, which he must have gotten from his mother.

“Well met, Lord Black,” the older Malfoy called, dipping his head in a brief bow.

Lord Black rolled his eyes and returned the bow, the sharp smile suddenly spreading over his mouth never dropping.

“Yes, yes! Well met and grand tidings! Honestly, Luci, it’s like we’re not even family!” Lord Black barked, and though the tone was light, there appeared to be some tension between them.

Hari was very pointedly ignoring both the tension and the greetings to approach the Malfoy Heir, and though Tom couldn’t hear what was being said, body language and the occasional drifting tone indicated they were bantering.

“Alright! Since everyone is here, accounted for, and ready, we shall now explain today’s party!” Sirius announced, apparently done with the mildly-threatening glaring contest he’d been indulging in.

Remus stepped up and flicked his wand, and out in the field, several large — familiar — hoops started floating up and drifting apart. Another adult a ways off opened up a trunk and started pulling out brooms, while another still set down a familiar-looking case.

Tom felt a disgusted feeling settle in his stomach.

“Today, we’ll be playing pick-up-Quidditch!” Sirius announced, with a proud smile.

The crowd around them either whooped in excitement or groaned in irritation, and though Tom didn’t do either, he was glad to know he wasn’t the only one not likely to participate in such a ridiculous thing.

“I’ll be honest. I quite preferred Neville’s celebration.” Tom announced, eying the mostly empty field they were setting up in with distaste, and completely tuning out of any further explanation. Luna laughed next to him, then skipped towards where the refreshment tables had been set up.

Behind them, there was a sharp clap and a sudden increase in chatter, so he assumed the explanations were done. Their current company at the tables seemed comprised of those more interested in sitting down and talking. It was a smaller group than the rather large group of people who wanted to get on brooms and try to kill each other with enchanted balls.Tom sent another dissatisfied look at the mock Quidditch pitch being set up, then followed after Luna as she took up two cups of tea and headed for a table. At least the girl showed no inclination towards getting on a broom and fluttering about.

(He’d been half-concerned she would, and then he’d have to grab a broom of his own, just to keep her from floating off.)

“You’re not going to play with us, Tom?” Hari asked excitedly as he dashed about, pausing by where he and Luna were getting themselves situated.

Tom only gave the boy half his attention, the other half on the bowl of punch down the way he knew he’d seen the ginger twins slip something into. No one drinking it seemed to have anything wrong with them, but it was likely a timed thing . . .

“No, I’ve little patience for the sport.” He replied, and then turned his full attention to the Malfoy heir when his hair spontaneously started growing and _sparkling_.

Several other people started to suffer the same fate, and Tom would admit — it was clever. Clever and rather amusing, from an outside perspective. Hari laughed when he followed Tom’s gaze, and then eagerly moved on, fairly running towards the pitch.

(Where the ginger twins seemed to miraculously appear, as far from the punch bowl as could be and proclaiming innocence to an irate — and still sparkling — Malfoy Heir.)

Luna popped open her book, and Tom settled back to observe, and for a total of three minutes, there was blissful silence.

And then Nott and the tall dark boy that was his shadow were sliding into seats across from him. Tom felt his expression slip from neutral curiosity to faint interest as he watched them set themselves up. Then of course, somehow, Neville appeared baring a small tray of sweets that he set on the table.

“We haven’t been introduced yet,” the boy between Nott and Neville announced, smile all easy, “I’m Zabini, Blaise Zabini.”

Tom recognized that easy smile and the glint in those eyes. It was much more familiar to him than anything else he’d yet come across in this time, even Nott’s more cautious cunning. He felt his own version of that smile slip onto his face, and was rewarded with the faintest flicker of Zabini’s dark eyes.

“Slytherin, Thomas Slytherin. A pleasure to be sure.” He announced.

Zabini did much better than Nott had in concealing his reaction to the name, the only noticeable sign a slightly widening of his smile.

“A Slytherin? Pray tell, where have you been hiding all these years?” He asked.

Tom managed to think only distantly of a string of dead-end-leads, a life lost to obscurity and the eventual total immersion into a persona that had only come into being out of boredom. His smile was still slightly tighter than he would have liked, for all that he tried not to let his own irritation and anger show.

“Feels as though I've been in a whole other life,” he mused absently.

Luna’s soft, surprised chuckle helped him shake off the rest of his lingering irritation for this realities Tom Riddle, and he ignored the flickering looks to give a more appropriate response.

“I was kept fairly close to home. My tutelage up to this point has been handled by my . . . Keepers, but with them gone Lord Lovegood felt it would be better for me to have a structured environment.” He announced.

Neville gave him another of those concerned looks, but his attention was fairly quickly drawn back towards the mock pitch, where a game had started surprisingly fast.

“Do you mind if we ask why your — you called them Keepers? — why they thought home tutoring was the better option?” Nott asked, head tilting in a familiar way.

Zabini was openly staring between him and Luna, something close to suspicion in his eyes.

“Well,” Tom started slowly, tone bordering on hesitance, and in a flash of what he’ll later call sheer-brilliance, he shrugged awkwardly and said ~~the first thing that came to mind,~~ “given who my biological father was — I mean, there were _issues_.”

Luna paused in flipping the pages of her book, to tilt her head in his direction. There was a stretched couple minutes of silence, a silence in which Tom decided that being his own son — or perhaps Grandson — wasn’t the worst sort of half-truth. Meanwhile, his vow to the irritating Ministry chap in charge of his case was protected, and either faction was allowed to come to their own — wrong — conclusions about him.

(And, he realized slowly, anything Dumbledore said about him could be twisted to look like the biased, hateful slander of a man who’d failed to protect Magical Britain’s youth from Tom’s ‘forefather,’ or ‘father,’ over a decade before. Just the griping of a man that wanted to bear the sins of the father against the son, and all that rot. It could actually work very nicely for him.)

“Well,” Nott said at length, a small little smile twisting the corners of his mouth, “regardless, I’ll be pleased to have you in our House. You seem an intelligent, pleasant sort, and we’re sorely lacking in those.”

Which may as well have been Slytherin code for: _You’re not half as irritating to speak to as some other bigots, and we intend to form a clutch for our own mental well-being._

“Yes, I quite approve,” Zabini announced, smile far more wolfish now that he’d been given a story and a bit of gossip to hold over his peers head, “we’ll of course be happy to show you around come September First.”

Neville gave both Slytherins a slow, reproachful look, and Tom suddenly realized that the soft-spoken Puff must be a Mediator.

“Do you mind if I ask how you’re both friends with Heir Longbottom?” He asked, probably a bit forward, but now he had to know if the Hufflepuff-Slytherin Union was still in play. Or if this realities version of him ever worked for something like that as his First year _Scheme_.

(It had been a hassle, given the time period and the tensions, to get everyone — especially the shy, pack-minded Puff’s — to agree to a working union between their houses. In the end, the promise of protection from bullies in exchange for - truthful - alibis won them over, just like it did the members of his own house. Of all the first-year schemes, his had ultimately been the best, because it carried on through the years. He’d been proud of it. This realities _him_ was a fool if he hadn't done it. Well, a bigger fool.)

“Oh, we’ve been friends since first year,” Zabini answered, smirking at Neville, who’d already turned his attention back to the game, “we got to know him on the long walks from the Great Hall to the lower levels of the castle. He knows Draco — that’s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy — a bit through us, just like we know Hari and Hermione a bit through him.”

Which wasn’t enough information to determine if the Union was still in place, but definitely made it a possibility. Tom nodded along though, and only turned his attention away when there was a lot of screaming and whooping from the pitch. He turned just in time to watch Hari pull out of a steep dive and thrust his arm up, something golden glimmering in his fist where he hovered a meter and a half above the ground.

“Bollox,” Neville hissed, rubbing at his chest slowly and taking deep breaths, “Scars me out my wits every time he pulls that stunt!” The other boy exclaimed, then stood to march towards the pitch.

Hermione, wearing a referees robes, was already circling Harry on a broom, and shouting.

“How did you come to be a ward of the Lovegoods?” Zabini asked.

Tom sighed, and turned his attention to the boy slowly. He could tell, from the gleam in his eye, that there were a lot more questions than that on the tip of his tongue.

(What he wouldn’t give for some music. Then he could pretend not to hear. Until one of the bloody Slytherins in front of him cast a muffling charm. Could they cast a muffling charm? There were enough adults present that the Ministry couldn’t really track it, could they?)

Tom answered or evaded questions in that manner for about an hour and a half, until all the players on the pitch had had a chance to exhaust themselves, and then the tables filled up when they descended in a hungry mob. The Ginger Menaces weren’t exhausted enough to not try playing pranks, and Hari wasn’t exhausted enough to not pester Tom about playing the next round, and Tom was exhausted enough to start flinging hexes, but didn’t because the people around him were going to be his classmates, and he didn’t want to walk into Hogwarts this time around with a whole bushel of enemies.

Finally, it was time for Harry to open presents. Hari did so with much aplomb and quite a bit more blushing than Neville had. Though, if anyone else was surprised by the boy stopping halfway through unwrapping a small, plainly-wrapped box and then standing to launch himself three tables over at the dour Potions Master, no one showed it.

(Well, no one but him, since Luna leaned over to whisper an explanation in his ear. )

“Professor Snape is Hari’s Mentor. Hari has a rather dab hand at potions, and before Lord Sirius was set free, Hari saw him as a father figure. Still does.” She whispered.

Tom observed the way the dour man seemed to sigh resignedly into the tight hug, one pale, potions-stained hand reaching up to pat at his braided hair. Lord Black was glowering, but appeared to be equally as resigned to his ward hanging off the potions master, babbling a mile a minute. Tom was confused, but decided to question things later, when his questions wouldn't be potentially insulting to anyone. Hari eventually returned to opening presents, though he had immediately slipped what appeared to be a bronze locket over his head before he did so.

Once that was all done, Hari and all those playing worked through the cake like it was a battle to see who could finish fastest. To his horror, Luna stood to join the party of Quidditch-players, when several of them cried-protest at playing again so soon.Hari showed a great deal of surprise himself when Luna skipped up and asked to referee, but even more surprise when Tom stomped over after her. Even if he had to play a position to use a broom, at least being in the air guaranteed that he’d be closer at hand than he would have been on the ground.

“You do know how to play, right?” Hari double-checked, just as Tom was strapping on the robes that were being provided for the players — all of them enchanted to turn the team colors, once chosen, and defend against the crisper air above.

“Of course I do,” Tom huffed “I just generally don’t see a _point_ to it.” He added, frowning at the broom in his hand.

Hari laughed in mock-outrage, his wild green eyes flickering to where Hermione was helping Luna get her referee robe on.

“Just under _exonerating circumstance_ , eh?” The boy teased.

“I’ll be closer at hand on a broom than on the ground, should she get distracted and start to drift into a Bludgers path,” Tom shrugged, eyeing the boy sharply.

(And trying very hard to ignore the warmth spreading over his cheeks.)

Hari just smiled at him slowly, mischievously, and Tom didn’t like that one bit. He showed this by sniffing disdainfully at the Claw and stomping past him, to Malfoy’s team. The blond looked surprised when he introduced himself, and Tom ended up as incidental Keeper, since theirs bowed out of the match in favor of more cake. The Ginger Menaces appeared on the sidelines, looking extremely excited — which seemed bad, to Tom — and then suddenly they were playing.

(Tom hated it. He hated needing to use the broom to fly — no matter that it was being very obedient — he hated the crisp air, he hated all the activity.)

The first ten minutes of the game dragged slightly, because he was trying to get used to the players, but after he knew them, it got easier to catch or block the Quaffle. It was still irritating beyond belief. But. Pretending that the Quaffle that he caught and always inevitably _threw back at someone’s face_ was Dumbledore’s head seemed to help. In fact, it was almost fun, after a point, because the chasers that came at him had started to do so warily.

(Which he didn’t really understand. It wasn’t like it was his fault that their patterns were so obvious. They all had tells, and if they wanted to hide them better, that was a _them_ problem. As it was.)

The chaser coming at him suddenly dropped and tossed the Quaffle up and over, to one of their fellows, who’d been trying to sneak up from the right. Tom was blocking the throw before the slim, frustrated-looking girl had even gotten the ball and tossed it.Another, slightly louder cheer went up this time when he tossed it back, and the timed gong — these were all short matches, meant to be played in thirty-minute bursts — sounded. Luna drifted towards the ground and Tom followed . . . And was immediately mobbed by Malfoy and his team, who were all throwing exclamations at him rapid fire.

“How long have you been playing!”

“I don’t remember seeing you around Hogwarts, where are you from?”

“They just pulled a Tormalund Feint! Perfectly! And you blocked it!”

“How did you manage to do that every time!”

Tom sighed.

“I should have stayed at home.” He announced to no one in particular.

He could hear Luna laughing at him from outside the mob. For that, he'd get her back. Somehow.

* * *

The day after the party, Luna walked through a doorway only to have her hair charmed soft, sparkling blue. She was enchanted. Enchanted and pleased, that Tom felt comfortable enough with her to play harmless pranks. Naturally, of course, it lead to a pranking war that lasted three days, in which Tom's hair ended up a lovely shade of shimmering lilac no less than four times, while Luna consistently found her books would up and crawl away from her. She wrote to Harry to get ideas after day one, and in response, the _twins_ sent a whole packet of suggestions. 

(She only used a handful of their ideas, because she wanted Tom to have fun, not be irritated, and she imagined that staining his teeth black or charming the doorways to sing to him as he walked through might irritate him.)

They finally called an end to their war when, while she was charming his shoes and socks to dance away from him, and he was charmed her paints to change color at random, Hari sent them a package that was a trap. Upon opening it, their skin turned sparkling and pearlescent, their hair a rainbow shimmer. It was sort of unanimous that they had one enemy and one enemy alone. 

(No matter that she thought the pearlescent skin was really rather lovely.)

They set up in the family parlor, and started writing out plans, and though Luna wasn't the best at staying on track, she thought her rune-work was really rather lovely, when combined with Tom's crafty rune circles.

"Should we try for a potion-infused candy next, do you think?"

Luna asked, attention only half on her drafting page, because the parchment Tom was preparing was so much more interesting.

"I'm not sure Hari is silly enough to eat any candy sent to him, after this." Tom muttered in response. 

Luna hummed in acknowledgment, and they quietly went back to work. Instead of sending the result creation to Hari directly, they forwarded it to Neville with the promise to leave him out of it if he sent it along. 

(Neville flooed her, just after he got it and worriedly asked her a string of questions about what was in the letter. Silly Neville.)

"It's not going to hurt him, Nev. He played a prank on Tom and I, and we're getting back at him." she soothed. 

Neville still seemed dubious, but then, Neville didn't approve of pranks in general, no matter how fun they were intended. 

(He especially detested the twins' pranks on Samhain, which usually involved singing - or screaming - pumpkins that popped out of nowhere and followed people around.)

Luan had never had quite so much fun before, as she did in that odd week of time where she was allowed to pull pranks and have fun. She hadn't had many opportunities for doing so, because it was always so much harder to _think_ at Hogwarts, and because her Housemates would take any pranks she pulled as a real act of war. Their treatment of her would be so much worse as a result, and it was already a bother to deal with. She accidentally said as much to Tom, while they were relaxing and waiting for Hari's response, sipping their afternoon tea.

"I think," Tom said, slow and smooth and for the first time dangerous, "I need to have a word with your Housemates."

Luna found that she could look at him, in that moment, at the Possibilities that were dark and dangerous. 

"Oh, no, don't do that," she said, shaking her head. 

"Luna, you can't just —" he started, and she knew what he was going to say. 

"I can let them bully me," she interrupted, smiling because he was sweet to worry about her, "because they don't matter, Tom."

His confused, still outraged look prompted her to explain.

"What they do hurts for now. But it only hurts for now. It won't hurt me in ten years, or twenty, or even in three. I am as I am, Tom, and they are as they are, and in my future, I will be elsewhere and they'll still be here. They'll be living ordinary lives and thinking ordinary things, but I'll be doing something extraordinary." She shrugged. 

Tom was staring at her, in that inscrutable, thinking way he tended to, and Luna only managed to look away when the floo chimed. She stood to go answer the floo, and Tom's voice followed her, stopped her in the doorway. 

"Maybe it won't affect you in the long run, Luna, but it affects you _now_. You're my friend. Whether you like it or not, I won't stand for other people hurting what isn't theirs to hurt." 

They were quiet words, all the more meaningful because she knew that Tom had never said anything like them to anyone. They were also hurt. That wasn't what she'd intended. 

"Oh Tom," she sighed, glancing back, "it's not that I don't appreciate you wanting to look after me, or that I don't like you looking after me. I do. I just don't want you to get yourself in trouble. Really. What would happen to you if they decided they didn't like your meddling?" she asked. 

"Nothing," he bit out, turning to frown at her, and she wasn't sure if she was imagining the way his brow softened the slightest bit, "nothing would happen to me, Luna, because it would only take one warning."

She wanted to say that he still shouldn't take that risk — Hari only got away with it because of his unwanted fame, after all — but honestly, really? How could she ask him not to be who and what he was? 

"Just don't get yourself in trouble, Tom," she sighed, turning back to the insistently chiming floo, "that would affect me more."

She couldn't. 

(It was Hari, calling her across the floo, complaining because the letter they'd sent had turned him — and Remus and Sirius by accidental extension — a solid, ever-changing color from head to toe, no matter what he put on, and even his Maurader guardians — and by consequence Fred and George — couldn't reverse it. She and Tom laughed over it, quietly, then had to explain how to reverse it. Neither of them talked about her bullies, or the fact that they were infested with Nargles, or anything to do with punishment, again. There was no need when she knew he would do as he saw fit, and when he knew she wouldn't approve of anything harmful, or that would make the situation worse.)

The next day, surprisingly, found him more . . . relaxed around her, but she wasn't complaining. It was good to see him smile.

(She probably should have remembered that Tom's idea of harmful was vastly different than her own.)


End file.
